[CentOS] can non-owner change file group setup?

Tue May 12 19:18:28 UTC 2009
nate <centos at linuxpowered.net>

mcclnx mcc wrote:
>
> We are tried to count how many files belong to certain group. Our system
> administrator told us "non-owner" can easy change file group name to
> another.  I have been tried several combination and never successful (only
> ROOT can change file group to other name).
>
> Does anyone know how "no-owner" can change file group name?

If the "no-owner" user has write access to the file they could
copy the file to a new file name(thus getting ownership of the
file), and overwriting the original file with the new file.

e.g.

[natea at us-cfe002:~]$ ls -l hosts
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 50 May 12 12:17 hosts
[natea at us-cfe002:~]$ cp hosts hosts_new
[natea at us-cfe002:~]$ ls -l hosts_new
-rw-r--r--  1 natea natea 50 May 12 12:18 hosts_new
[natea at us-cfe002:~]$ mv hosts_new hosts
mv: overwrite `hosts', overriding mode 0644? y
[natea at us-cfe002:~]$ ls -l hosts
-rw-r--r--  1 natea natea 50 May 12 12:18 hosts
[natea at us-cfe002:~]$

nate