I have a large shell script that I want to make setuid. Someone suggested rewriting it in C. I would prefer to rewrite it in Perl, if possible. Generally, are setuid programs more secure in C than in Perl? Specifically, I plan to make the following steps. If anyone sees any reason why this will be less secure than a pure C solution, please let me know. Other suggestions are also welcome.

wr.c (C wrapper):

#include <unistd.h>
main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
   char* sArgv[8];
   sArgv[0] = (char*)"/usr/bin/perl";
   sArgv[1] = (char*)"-wT";
   sArgv[2] = (char*)"/home/fred/setuid/t1.pl";
   sArgv[3] = argv[1];
   sArgv[4] = 0;
   execv("/usr/bin/perl", sArgv);
}

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For various reasons, I prefer not to use a shebang line in the Perl script, and will not use /usr/bin/perl but my own custom version.

Example Perl script t1.pl:

use strict;
sub dump_user_details {
   my $uid = shift;
   my ($user, $u, $pgid, $home, $shell) = (getpwuid($uid))[0,2,3,7,8];
   print "ruid='$<' euid='$>' uid='$uid' u='$u' pgid='$pgid'\n";
   print "user='$user' home='$home' shell='$shell'\n";
   my @gids = ( $pgid );
   while (my ($name, $pw, $gid, $members) = getgrent) {
      push(@gids, $gid) if grep($_ eq $user, split(' ', $members));
   }
   endgrent();
   print "gids:@gids:\n";
}
my $arg1 = shift;
print "arg1='$arg1'\n";
dump_user_details($<);
dump_user_details($>) if $> != $<;

[download]

Then issue the following commands:

cc -o wr wr.c
chown root wr t1.pl
chmod 700 t1.pl
chmod 4710 wr
./wr test

[download]

In reply to setuid: Perl v C by eyepopslikeamosquito

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