I was just notified by a Hobbit user that the current beta client has a security problem in the client "logfetch" utility, when installed as suid-root (which is the default if "make install" is executed as root). Impact ------ The effect of this is that any user who is able to login and create files on a system with the Hobbit client installed, can use the "logfetch" utility to get read access to any file on the system. Which versions are affected --------------------------- This issue affects all of the pre-release (alfa-, beta- and snapshot-versions) of the Hobbit client version 4.2 released until today (2006-Jun-30), when the client was installed as root and ~hobbit/client/bin/logfetch is suid-root. The 4.1.x releases of the Hobbit client does not include the "logfetch" utility, and are therefore NOT affected by this. Remedy ------ It is recommended that you remove the suid bit from the logfetch utility on systems where you have installed the Hobbit 4.2-beta client package. To do this: chmod 755 ~hobbit/client/bin/logfetch Note that this may cause logfile monitoring to break, if the client does not have read access to the monitored logfiles. Running logfetch as suid-root will most likely be removed in the final Hobbit 4.2 release of the client. Regards, Henrik Storner, the Hobbit developer