movemail is a

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...

by the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...

that moves

mail The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letter (message), letters, and parcel (package), parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid ...

from a user's

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

mailspool to another file. It is part of GNU Mailutils. A compromising of movemail was the backbone of the

hack Hack may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Games * ''Hack'' (Unix video game), a 1984 roguelike video game * ''.hack'' (video game series), a series of video games by the multimedia franchise ''.hack'' Music * ''Hack'' (album), a 199 ...

described in ''

The Cuckoo's Egg ''The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage'' is a 1989 book written by Clifford Stoll. It is his first-person account of the hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National ...

'' by which

Markus Hess Markus Hess, a German citizen, is best known for his endeavours as a hacker in the late 1980s. Alongside fellow hackers Dirk Brzezinski and Peter Carl, Hess hacked into networks of military and industrial computers based in the United States, Euro ...

broke into the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

computer system in 1986. The flaw in movemail, which has long since been repaired, is that the program was revised in 1986 to allow

superuser In computing, the superuser is a special user account used for system administration. Depending on the operating system (OS), the actual name of this account might be root, administrator, admin or supervisor. In some cases, the actual name of t ...

access into the host computer in order to move POP

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

. The movemail bug has been highlighted as one of the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

family's most egregious failures of

security Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercive change) caused by others, by restraining the freedom of others to act. Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be of persons and social ...

.'' The UNIX-HATERS Handbook'', 1994, IDG Books Worldwide, San Mateo, CA, USA, pp. 246-7

References

{{Reflist

External links

GNU Mailutils Manual: movemail
Free email software

See also

References

External links