Hey Mike,
As you mentioned, Asterisk requires write access to many files/directories
(ie: /var/*/asterisk, etc.) which are currently owned by root:root with
755/775/664/644 permissions. So you would have to do many other tweaks
other than simply running asterisk as another user. Plus, if Asterisk
launches other applications, that could cause some issues. I imagine you
could make many of these changes yourself if using unionfs, and get it to
work, but it would be a lot of customization, which could break other
things.
While it's always a good security practice to run any service with the
least system-level authority as possible, I don't know if it makes much of
a difference here. Obviously if you were running Asterisk on a server which
was handling multiple services and functions, this logic would certainly
apply. But Astlinux is designed primarily to function as an Asterisk PBX.
While it can do many other wonderful things, even if Asterisk alone was
compromised, and it was running under a limited user account, an intruder
would be able to have a great level of control over the system's core
function. Granted you could make the config files read only from the
asterisk user, which could help prevent unauthorized modifications, and
take other similar precautions to lock it down, but it seems like a lot of
work for a minimal amount of benefit in this case. I guess the question
that it comes down to is, assuming Asterisk was compromised, what else on
the box is of any interest to an intruder other than Asterisk itself.
It's much easier to simply use ACLs and other built in safe guards to limit
access and connectivity to the box from unauthorized locations or servers.
You could also use other tools (like Zabbix) to track system changes and
send alerts of possible security breaches. I've been running it this way
for years (as root) and have not had any issues with security.
-James
On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 12:26 AM, Michael Knill <
[email protected]> wrote:
> To the group
>
> Best practice states that Asterisk should not run as root but this is
> default in Astlinux.
> Does changing the Asterisk user break anything? Does anyone bother?
> If so, is it just a matter of changing runuser & group in Asterisk.conf
> and changing relevant file permissions?
>
> Thanks
> Mike
>
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