source: http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/13058/info

A local file overwrite vulnerability affects SGI IRIX. This issue is due to a failure of the affected utility to drop privileges prior to carrying out critical functionality.

An attacker may leverage this issue to cause the affected utility to write data to any file on the affected computer with superuser privileges. Although unconfirmed, it is possible that this issue may be leveraged for privilege escalation.

It should be noted that although only SGI IRIX 6.5.22(maintenance) has been confirmed vulnerable, it is likely that all IRIX 6.5 versions are affected as well. 

gr_osview -s /etc/shadow 