CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxunix
user1166981
user1166981

Reputation: 1746

Can a program adopt the permissions of the user, or is it completely restricted by owner?

For example when a program is run in a *nix environment by root user, but the program owner is a non-root user, could that program carry out actions with root privileges?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 144

Answers (3)

Veger
Veger

Reputation: 37915

The permissions of an application are determined on the user that executed the program.

If it would take the permissions of the owner, the sudo command, for example, would not have any effect. Furthermore, most applications in /bin (or any other system location) are owned by the root user (so one is not able to (easily) modify them), but are still executed with the users permissions.

Note, that if an program has the setuid or setgid bit(s) set, then the application is started with respectively the user and/or group permissions. This allows regular users to perform actions that typically require root permissions without having access to the root account.

To set the setuid bit use:

chmod u+s /path/to/application

Same goes for the setgid bit, but using g+s instead of u+s.

Upvotes: 3

cnicutar
cnicutar

Reputation: 182684

By default the process runs with the ID and privileges of the user that starts it, not with the program owner ID. So if root starts a process from a program owned by an ordinary user, that process will run with ID=0.

As Johnsyweb mentions in the comments, if the program happens to have the setuid bit set, it will be run as the owner. That's what setuid means: set user ID. Typically this is done to allow regular users to run programs such as ping that require superuser permissions.

Note however that Linux for example has a superior mechanism in the form of "Linux Capabilities" where certain select permissions can be granted instead of full setuid.

Upvotes: 2

Olaf Dietsche
Olaf Dietsche

Reputation: 74078

The user starting the program determines the permissions for that run. If you want a program run with the permissions of another user you can either use su or sudo or set the setuid bit for the program 

chown user program
chmod u+s program

This will force the permissions to be used for user, no matter who runs the program.

Upvotes: 1

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