Finding and Listing Setuid Files

Introduction

In Unix-like operating systems, setuid (set user ID) is a special file permission that allows a user to execute a file with the permissions of the file's owner. While this can be useful for certain system operations, it can also pose security risks if misused. In this challenge, you'll learn how to identify and list all setuid files on a system, which is an essential skill for system administrators and security professionals.

Skills Graph

Locate and List Setuid Files

In this step, you'll use the find command to search the entire filesystem for setuid files and save the results to a file.

Tasks

• Search the entire filesystem for files with the setuid permission set.
• Save the list of setuid files to a file named setuid_list in your home directory.

Requirements

• Execute all commands as the labex user in the /home/labex directory.
• Use the find command to search for setuid files.
• Save the output to a file named setuid_list in the /home/labex directory.

Example

After completing this task, the setuid_list file might contain entries similar to the following:

/usr/bin/sudo
/usr/bin/passwd
/usr/bin/chage
/usr/bin/gpasswd
/usr/bin/newgrp
/usr/bin/su
/usr/bin/mount
/usr/bin/umount
/usr/bin/crontab
/usr/bin/pkexec

Note that the actual list may vary depending on the system configuration.

Summary

In this challenge, you learned how to find and list all setuid files on a Unix-like system. This task is crucial for system administrators and security professionals to identify potentially risky files with elevated permissions. You used the find command with specific options to locate files with the setuid bit set and redirected the output to a file for further analysis. This skill is valuable for conducting security audits, identifying potential vulnerabilities, and maintaining system integrity.