Re: Why don't ISPs offer shell anymore?

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Article #66

#66

From: Duncan Simpson
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 00:00

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For what it is worth I will add my 2p-worth. Shell access is a much
bugger than no shell access. Even if they can not get into the system
because you have chrooted them, used shadow passwords, etc there may
still be holes.

Are you using perl 5.003? Then anyone can get root using suid perl. Do
you use sendmail 8.7.x and have it setuid? Then anyone can create a
root shell. Recently at fell vistim to a buffer overflow on a whole
lot of systems. Without shell access none of these are exploitable.

On the service I administer only the admins have shell access---plenty
of the users are super newbies who would ask support why any number of
DOS commands do not work and it frsdtivslly reduces the security
headaches (about sharp people doing bad stuff, newbies eyes are easy
to keep on their own business).

We do sell people mail domains though and they need not have static IP
or more than one address with their ISP.

Duncan (-:

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From: dps96r@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Duncan Simpson)
Subject: Re: Why don't ISPs offer shell anymore?
Date: 1997/06/17
Message-ID: <5o6dbf$rat@wapping.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
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References: <5akrer$1e7$1@sun1.sure.net> <5bejv3$o2e$2@marina.cinenet.net> <stephan-1406971756270001@ts41-2.wla.ts.ucla.edu> <5o47ot$hed$1@warez.psyber.com> <5o4dhi$o06$1@philippi.alphalink.com>
Organization: Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
Newsgroups: la.wanted,la.general,ca.general,alt.internet.access.wanted,linux.admin.isp

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