🚀 go-pugleaf

VESOFT@cup.portal.com (Michael D Hensley) writes:
>Agree/disagree/discussion: Any root-owned world-writable file should be
>considered a potential security loophole.

Strongly disagree.  The only difference between it being owned by root and
owned by someone else (discounting quotas) is that if it's owned by root,
someone else can't chmod or chown it.  This is an INCREASE in security.
Especially in these days of NFS, where people can become anyone other than root
with physical access to a workstation.  (Well, they can become root, but then
they're "nobody" over NFS.)

You could argue that files shouldn't be world-writable, but I don't see how you
can argue that given that a file is world-writable (but not set[ug]id), it's a
danger to have it be owned by root rather than daemon or nobody or something.

tar@math.ksu.edu (Tim Ramsey) writes:
>How do you get a complete list of files that are trusted by root, or by
>programs that root trusts (that is, are setuid root)?
>
>Much easier to simply not have world-writable files owned by root.

Not having world-writable files owned by root has nothing to do with this.  If
root or a setuid-root program trusts a world-writable file, the fact that it is
owned by someone else doesn't help you.