hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) (12/20/90)
Masataka Ohta and John F. Haugh Jr. have carried on a protracted discussion
of the root==nobody versus security problem. Well as we all know, having a
mysterious root from workstation X making modifications *without permission*
is just not a good thing. Hence "foreign" root == nobody.
From there we've observed that daemon and uucp are not all that great to get
from workstation X either.
This issue has been addressed by the folks over at MIT where everyone can
(atleast did) log into lab workstations as root. For a discussion of
Kerberos and how it works with NFS, please go to comp.protocols.kerberos.
Kerberos may or may not be LAN specific, but it is one solution to passing
User Identification over the network.
Sun has done some work with secure RPC using a method similar to Kerberos
(to my eyes) which provides network-to-local uid translation.
Both methods include windows in which the key(s) are valid, and both use up
valuable system resources providing the services you folks have requested.
Both are interesting solutions to a tough problem resulting from a complex
system of user identification.
Certainly the system could be made simpler if I could not write to remote
files, but then I wouldn't be doing my work. That would lead to my being
fired and becoming a beach comber. Hmmm, we may be on to something here. :-)
--
-
Jim Hutchison {dcdwest,ucbvax}!ucsd!fps!hutch
Disclaimer: I am not an official spokesman for FPS computingjfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) (12/20/90)
In article <13995@celit.fps.com> hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) writes: >Masataka Ohta and John F. Haugh Jr. There is no John F. Haugh Jr. Least not that I know of ;-) -- John F. Haugh II UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832 Domain: jfh@rpp386.cactus.org "While you are here, your wives and girlfriends are dating handsome American movie and TV stars. Stars like Tom Selleck, Bruce Willis, and Bart Simpson."
mohta@necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) (12/20/90)
In article <13995@celit.fps.com> hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) writes: >From there we've observed that daemon and uucp are not all that great to get >from workstation X either. On 4.3BSD, /usr/bin/{at,atq,atrm} is owned by daemon. On SunOS3.5 (we are still mainly using it because it is simple, fast and stable), in.syslogd (executed from /etc/rc.local) is owned by daemon. On SunOS4.0, (or, maybe, 4.0.3, I'm not sure) /usr/bin/yp is owned by bin. >This issue has been addressed by the folks over at MIT where everyone can >(atleast did) log into lab workstations as root. For a discussion of >Kerberos and how it works with NFS, I don't know much about Kerberos, so, Kerberos may have solved most (or all) of the problem. Anyway, forget about NFS (because it is already complex and thus not appropriate as a simple example), and consider the relationships of /etc/hosts.equiv, /.rhosts and ~/.rhosts. On RISC/os 4.51, most commands are owned by bin, but still, BSD semantics is maintained as for /etc/hosts.equiv, /.rhosts and ~/.rhosts. Finally, on many systems, commands related to news are owned by news and many local administrative news are posted by root. Masataka Ohta
src@scuzzy.in-berlin.de (Heiko Blume) (12/22/90)
hutch@fps.com (Jim Hutchison) writes: >This issue has been addressed by the folks over at MIT where everyone can >(atleast did) log into lab workstations as root. For a discussion of >Kerberos and how it works with NFS, please go to comp.protocols.kerberos. >Kerberos may or may not be LAN specific, but it is one solution to passing >User Identification over the network. unfortunately kerberos et al are restricted to the US (grmbl). everybody outside the US is still in deep sh*t until those McCarthy types finally bite the dust. -- Heiko Blume <-+-> src@scuzzy.in-berlin.de <-+-> (+49 30) 691 88 93 public source archive [HST V.42bis]: scuzzy Any ACU,f 38400 6919520 gin:--gin: nuucp sword: nuucp uucp scuzzy!/src/README /your/home