[778] in linux-security and linux-alert archive
Re: [linux-security] standard users,groups,perms?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Prato)
Tue Jun 11 11:50:16 1996
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 1996 05:31:32 -0600 (MDT)
From: Adam Prato <adamp@mickey.ovid.com>
To: "Joseph S. D. Yao" <jsdy@cais.cais.com>
Cc: jjr@zilker.net, linux-security@tarsier.cv.nrao.edu
In-Reply-To: <199606051931.PAA24605@cais2.cais.com>
On Wed, 5 Jun 1996, Joseph S. D. Yao wrote:
> I always insist that absolutely nothing at all whatsoever on the file
> system be owned by root. Nothing. At all. Unless there is no other
> way to do it (whatever the "it" might be). There should be a small set
> of accounts whose passwords are protected equally as well as root's,
> that are used for maintaining the various parts of the system. These
> would be, e.g., bin, sys, adm, daemon, kmem, mail, uucp, lp, games,
> field, etc. Directories and files - ESPECIALLY setuid programs (and
> more of those should be setgid) - should be owned by one of these, and
> NOT by root. This would reduce immensely the number of times that it
> would be "necessary" to be root to perform some task or other; and thus
> the number of windows of opportunity for certain types of attack - and
> for simple mistakes.
I dont see how root 'ownership' plays into this. The owner of a file means
that this userid is the only one who can make changes to the file itself.
Could you please explain the benefits of not having root owned files on a
system? This concept seems to elude me.
Adam
