Setuid

setuid and setgid (short for "set user ID upon execution" and "set group ID upon execution", respectively) are Unix access rights flags that allow users to run an executable with the permissions of the executable's owner or group respectively and to change behaviour in directories. They are often used to allow users on a computer system to run programs with temporarily elevated privileges in order to perform a specific task. While the assumed user id or group id privileges provided are not always elevated, at a minimum they are specific.

setuid and setgid are needed for tasks that require higher privileges than those which common users have, such as changing their login password. Some of the tasks that require elevated privileges may not immediately be obvious, though — such as the ping command, which must send and listen for on a network interface.

When an executable file has been given the setuid attribute, normal users on the system who have permission to execute this file gain the privileges of the user who owns the file (commonly root) within the created process. When root privileges have been gained within the process, the application can then perform tasks on the system that regular users normally would be restricted from doing. The invoking user will be prohibited by the system from altering the new process in any way, such as by using ptrace, LD_LIBRARY_PATH or sending signals to it (signals from the terminal will still be accepted, however).

While the setuid feature is very useful in many cases, its improper use can pose a security risk if the setuid attribute is assigned to executable programs that are not carefully designed. Due to potential security issues, many operating systems ignore the setuid attribute when applied to executable shell scripts.

The setgid attribute will allow for changing the group-based privileges within a process, like the setuid flag does for user-based privileges.

The presence of setuid executables explains why the chroot system call is not available to non-root users on Unix. See limitations of chroot for more details.

...
Wikipedia