There is a problem (actually several) with the "cgiwrap" program on
Cobalt RaQ2 servers.  It is supposed to run CGI programs as the proper
user instead of "nobody" to make CGIs a little more secure.

The Cobalt directory structure is as follows:

/home/sites/site1/ - top level directory of the site (site1, site2, ...)
/home/sites/site1/web - top level directory of the web site
/home/sites/site1/users/*/web - top level directory of web sites for
                                individual users (like ~user/public_html)

CGI scripts in the site /web directory should run as the user that owns
the script and the site1 group (each site has its own group).  Instead,
they run as user "nobody" group "nobody".

The bigger problem is that cgiwrap apparently interprets top level
directories of the site /web directory as users.  So if you have a CGI
in a directory like /home/sites/site1/web/test/test.cgi and attempt to
go to it at http://www.site1.com/test/test.cgi AND there is a user on
the system named "test", cgiwrap thinks it should run the script as user
"test".  It then actually attempts to run a script in /web directory of
the user "test".

This can be used to break other sites on a RaQ2 in several ways.  First
of all, if there is are two sites on the system, and one has CGI scripts
(say for example "submit.cgi") in a subdirectory of their site /web
directory called "scripts", the admin(s) of the second site can keep any
scripts in that directory from running by creating a user named
"scripts" (cgiwrap will give a "file not found" error).  Second (and
more serious for e-commerce type sites), if the second admin then
creates programs with the same name in the users/scripts/web directory,
they will be run when requests for the first site are made.

When someone calls http://www.site1.com/scripts/submit.cgi,
http://www.site2.com/users/scripts/submit.cgi will be run
(transparently).  First, that will break site1, but it also can lead to
private information being submitted to site1 being submitted to site2
instead.  This is the biggest security problem.

I notified Cobalt about this several weeks ago now, and they've said
they are working on it, but that is it.  They haven't released any kind
of notice or update as of yet either.
--
Chris Adams <cmadams@hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Information Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.