Verify that All World-Writable Directories Have Sticky Bits Set
Description
When the so-called ‘sticky bit’ is set on a directory,
only the owner of a given file may remove that file from the
directory. Without the sticky bit, any user with write access to a
directory may remove any file in the directory. Setting the sticky
bit prevents users from removing each other’s files. In cases where
there is no reason for a directory to be world-writable, a better
solution is to remove that permission rather than to set the sticky
bit. However, if a directory is used by a particular application,
consult that application’s documentation instead of blindly
changing modes.
To set the sticky bit on a world-writable directory DIR, run the
following command:
Rationale
Failing to set the sticky bit on public directories allows unauthorized
users to delete files in the directory structure.
The only authorized public directories are those temporary directories
supplied with the system, or those designed to be temporary file
repositories. The setting is normally reserved for directories used by the
system, by users for temporary file storage (such as /tmp
), and
for directories requiring global read/write access.
Shell script
The following script can be run on the host to remediate the issue.
df --local -P | awk '{if (NR!=1) print $6}' \
| xargs -I '$6' find '$6' -xdev -type d \
\( -perm -0002 -a ! -perm -1000 \) 2>/dev/null \
-exec chmod a+t {} +