🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <FAIGIN.92Oct23123354@soldan.aero.org> faigin@aero.org (Daniel P. Faigin) writes:

> On Fri, 23 Oct 1992 15:01:02 +0000, gvm@nemesys.demon.co.uk (Granville Moore)
> said: 
> 
> > You don't have to share the root password in order to allow more
> > than one person to "su root" or login as root.  All you need are multiple
> > /etc/passwd entries with uid 0.  Their activities will be indistinguishable,
> > once they've su'd or logged in, but this would be the case with shared
> > passwords anyway.
> 
> The problem with this is that you don't have individual accountability, which
> is required in some situations.

Er, didn't I just say that?  If individual accountability is required, then you
can't have more than one "root" on standard Unix at all (by whatever
mechanism), since root will always be able to modify the audit trail.

Even if you want to go for more exotic schemes with WORM audit trails, you need
something more than standard Unix to be able to discriminate between different
super-user's actions during concurrent "su" sessions.

If you can get away without individual accountability, then the securest
method of allowing multiple-root access is the one that I mentioned above
(for "vanilla" Unix).

Regards,

Granville Moore                                  gvm@nemesys.demon.co.uk