FW: FW: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?

From: Stephen Major (smajor_at_gmail.com)
Date: 07/21/05

  • Next message: Simon L. Nielsen: "Re: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?"
    To: <freebsd-security@freebsd.org>
    Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 12:06:44 -0700
    
    

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    I have grabbed some quotes from various discussions on this topic these are
    other peoples opinions!

    ">Regarding su vs. direct login, you should use su, it doesn't give
    > you much, but it does give you knowledge of who logged in as root
    > and when (provided that he did not edit the logs :-)

    Yes, it gives you a huge advantage, assuming you disable direct root
    logins and only certain accounts are allowed to run su(1). The advantage
    is that in order to gain root access, you must compromise either a
    daemon running as root, or an account capable of running su. This
    decreases your vulnerable profile, as only certain accounts can be used
    to gain root privileges at all."

    "> Regarding su vs. direct login, you should use su, it doesn't give
    > you much, but it does give you knowledge of who logged in as root
    > and when (provided that he did not edit the logs :-)
    And if you follow up by disabling direct root logins, you now must first
    authenticate as a user in order to attempt to guess the root password,
    and you get those attempts logged. That's a bigger win than logging
    successful root logins IMO :-)

    The biggest advantage of sudo, though, is less security-related and more
    "what did that admin do at 3 am?". Because sudo logs every command, you
    can see just what was done. Obviously, a malicious user could circumvent
    this most if not all of the time, but it can be great for seeing what
    was done with good intentions."

    "Understand I am NOT arguing against sudo. Properly setup, it's
    a wonderful tool for giving the power you want to sub-admins and
    even co-admins get benefit from using it. But that doesn't mean
    that I'd lock myself out of root entirely as Apple has done. This
    is an area where they did it wrong, just like having tcsh as the
    default shell."

    And beyond that how many holes you going to create by replacing su with sudo
    just because some admin does not know how to configure it correctly?

    I too understand the usefulness of the tool but do not replace su with it,
    many of us like su and how it operates. My servers for instance have 2
    accounts in the wheel group, and su to root is perfect for that application.

    - -----Original Message-----
    From: owner-freebsd-security@freebsd.org
    [mailto:owner-freebsd-security@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Mike Hunter
    Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 11:55 AM
    To: Stephen Major
    Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org
    Subject: Re: FW: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?

    On Jul 21, "Stephen Major" wrote:

    > Sudo requires extra configuration that su does not.
    >
    > Why should I have to waste my time configuring another app just because a
    > handful of people want it? I like su and how it works and I guarantee I am
    > not the only one. You want it replaced replace it your self
    > cd /usr/ports/security/sudo && make install clean
    >
    > That simple! Don't waste our time because you want something to be easier
    > for you

    Last week I had to do a little work on a 1980's AT&T Unix box. I'm glad
    that yours isn't the only opinion that has shaped the evolution of unix,
    or else I'd probably still be using such OSes all day!

    Sudo is a great tool, and adding it as part of the base system would be
    a great way to advance the FreeBSD security and usability baseline. After
    time, maybe enough people would start using sudo in place of su and it
    would be time to consider retiring su...a process that has happened
    thousands of times as a natural part of an evolving OS.

    Mike
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  • Next message: Simon L. Nielsen: "Re: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?"

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