🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17116@umd5.umd.edu> matthews@oberon.umd.edu (Mike Matthews) writes:
>In article <1992Nov20.134347.9096@ifi.unizh.ch> lytras@avalon.physik.unizh.ch (Apostolos Lytras) writes:
>>Argghhh.... root runs shellscripts!! DON'T DON'T DON'T! A shellscript
>>that is run by root *is* a threat to the security of your system and 
>>possibly of many other systems as well. Especially when it is supposed
>>to run inattendedly.
>Bull.

NOT.

>Do you know how many shell scripts there are on your system?  How 'bout
>/etc/rc?  Guess who runs it.

Please look at when /etc/rc is run. This is just a different case, but I
don't want to get into a discussion about unattendedly running shell
scripts here. I was making it clear that any unattendedly running shell script 
is a possible threat to system security. If you don't believe that, that
is your problem, not mine ;-).

>SETUID shell scripts, now there's a problem.  Not to mention *writeable*
>shell scripts that root runs.

He will probably not get his shell script to run as a LoginHook, for
various reasons. I don't know how secure the loginwindow application is,
but I hope it set the uid of anyone executing LoginHook to the real uid
(loginwindow itself runs probably setuid root, just as 'login' does). So
he can't just make the script executable by root, nor can he make the
logfile writable only by root, and anyone could fake the entries, which
he doesn't want, probably. The script and the log will be accessible by
anyone, no secure path, nothing. Then he will want to avoid that, so he
will put s-bit on his scripts and put them in "secure" paths.
Fortunately csh tests his real uid and even in suid root mode will not
run as root. This will just not work, but it may threaten his system. So
it is absolutely no "bull" to tell him not to do it, because you have to
fear that he will have to make his Scripts SUID root to run, if
loginwindow is an intelligent application. And that IS a security hole.

>>Besides, your programs look like a lot of redundancy to me. Every Login
>>and Logout gets logged (with time, connecting host etc.) in
>>/usr/adm/wtmp. There is also information about shutdowns, reboots and
>>crashes in that file.

Okay, before 3.0 you had to configure syslogd.conf to log everything, or
install the enormously helpful application "MOTD" which can be found on
the archives, so logins on the console would be logged as well... but
there ARE different ways of achieving this without additional
shellscripts and dwrites...

Cheers
- A.

-- 
	 lytras@ifi.unizh.ch   		|   Apostolos Lytras
	 lytras@avalon.physik.unizh.ch	|   Informatik Club der Uni
	 lytras@amiga.physik.unizh.ch  	|   Zuerich, SysAdmin