israel@qantel.UUCP ( Renegade@ex2564) (07/26/85)
< Bug Poison > The user agent seems to give access to certain administrator functions to normal users, such as mount, shutdown, lpstart, etc. The easiest way to avoid these problems is to deactivate the user agent (ie, windowing environment) to begin with, by deleting the 'exec ua' line from the users' .profile file in their home directories. This will result in their being put directly into the Bourne shell interface upon logging in. In this environment, they would have to know the su password before executing a shutdown. If this is not a viable alternative, then I suggest editing the menus to disallow access to these commands (I don't happen to remember how this is done off the top of my head, but do seem to recall reading that it is indeed do-able. -- Renegade of Berkeley MDS Qantel or Renegade Systems ucbvax!dual!qantel!israel ucbvax!dual!qantel!hamster!israel Disclaimer: "Who, me? I wasn't even there!"
revc@gwsd.UUCP (Bob Van Cleef) (08/02/85)
In article <494@qantel.UUCP>, israel@qantel.UUCP ( Renegade@ex2564) writes: > > The user agent seems to give access to certain administrator functions > to normal users, such as mount, shutdown, lpstart, etc. The easiest > way to avoid these problems is to deactivate the user agent (ie, windowing > environment) to begin with, by deleting the 'exec ua' line from the > users' .profile file in their home directories. This will result in their > being put directly into the Bourne shell interface upon logging in. > In this environment, they would have to know the su password before > executing a shutdown. > All they then have to do is execute the User Agent manually from the command line. To prevent this, you would also have to change the permissions on /usr/bin/ua from 755. The cleanest answer may be eliminating the setuid flags on many of the sub menus of the ua. The real key would be to separate the access to Unix from the rest of the features available to 'Expert' users. (Create a new class of user, the 'Admin' user.) Then restrict the non-Admin user from giving the Admin privilage to themselves. Security on a 7300 is a serious problem when you consider that the machine is designed to go into potentially hostile environments. (ie. Anything outside the 'friendly' world of research and development.) Bob giving themselves permission to become an administrative user. -- Bob Van Cleef ...sdcsvax!gwsd!revc Gateway Computer Systems (619) 457-2701 4980 Carroll Canyon Road San Diego, CA 92121