Re: Multi-User Security

From: David E. Meier (dev_at_eth0.ch)
Date: 05/18/04

  • Next message: Michael Collette: "Re: Mail Server in the DMZ question" 
    Date: Tue, 18 May 2004 18:32:30 +0200 (CEST)
To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org

    > On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 02:08:40PM +0200, David E. Meier wrote:
    >> Hello list.
    >>
    >> I would like to get your opinion on what is a safe multi-user
    >> environment.
    >> The scenario:
    >>
    >> We would like to offer to some customers of ours some sort of network
    >> backup/archive. They would put daily or weekly backups from their local
    >> machine on our server using rsync and SSH. Therefore, they all have a
    >> user
    >> account on our server. However, we must ensure that they would
    >> absolutely
    >> not be able to access any data of each other at all.
    >>
    >> What is the "best and safest" way to do so? Regular UNIX permission
    >> settings? File system ACL's? User jails? Restricting commands in their
    >> path environment? Or would it even make sense to encrypt the file
    >> system?
    >> How would some of the solutions affect data backups/restore on our side?
    >
    > You generally would like to avoid giving people shell (ssh) access if
    > you can avoid it. If you must give shell access, it is best to set up a
    > jail.
    >
    > However, if you're just doing backup/file access - shell access isn't
    > necessary. You can do ftps, (ports/ftp/bsdftpd-ssl), and easily use
    > that to chroot users. You can do sftp (without ssh shell access), but
    > that's trickier to set up.

    Unfortunately we will be using rsync and AFAIK it uses SSH for its
    communication. This way we only transfer the modified files and thus
    greatly reducing traffic.

    > One popular solution these days is WebDAV. You use it along with
    > apache, run it over https, and users can access their files with IE or
    > other clients.

    That's true. In theory at least. ;-) Unfortunately again, IE and File
    Explorer have either bugs or incompatibilities built in that prevents
    using them in a production environment with Linux/Unix. I tried this setup
    before and sometimes it stalls, sometimes it works normal then again it
    takes 2 minutes to transfer some 2KB document... Third-party clients like
    webdrive worked without any complaints though.

    Dave
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