[MPlayer-users] use mplayer to view VCD under console mode(w/ VESA driver).

[D Richard Felker III]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 02:56:57PM +0100, gabor wrote:
> On Thu, 2002-10-24 at 12:41, mwmiller at columbus.rr.com wrote:
> > [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 11:58:50AM +0200, Steffen Hein <st.hein at t-online.de> wrote:
> > > [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > > Am Thursday 24 October 2002 11:47 schrieb KarenLiu at via.com.tw:
> > > > I wanna use mplayer to view VCD under console mode(w/ VESA driver).
> > > > How can I do?
> > > as root:
> > > mplayer -vo vesa -vcd 1
> > 
> > Better to
> > # chmod +s /path/to/bin/mplayer
> > so you can use mplayer as a mere mortal as well.
> 
> 
> but it's a security risk...
> 
> not wanting to say it's a worse solution, just that this also has a
> drawback..

Calling it a security 'risk' is a joke. It's immediately giving root
to all users and anyone who happens to remotely exploit a
non-privileged service on your system, e.g. apache or identd, since
mplayer (intentionally) has no mechanism to try to limit what the user
running it can do with it, since it's not supposed to be a privileged
program!

Making passwd suid-root is a security risk.

Making screen suid-root is a security nightmare.

Making mplayer suid-root is like leaving your car unlocked and
unattended with the keys in it in downtown Atlanta.

Rich