On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Mark Crispin wrote: > If you run the IMAP server logged in as a non-root user, it will be > preauthenticated as that user. This has two consequences: > 1) it can not log in as any other user > 2) there is no login or other security step; the client can immediately > do arbitrary access to the user's mail.
Actually, it looks like a relatively simple hack to change the if (uid ==0) to a different uid and skip the setuid bits, but that would be very silly. Bottom line is that UW imapd is 1) the reference implementation by the dudes who invented IMAP, so you can be pretty sure it's correct, and 2) designed to work pretty much as you'd expect with normal unix users following the normal unix security model with normal mail delivery with a default installation of sendmail, or something that acts like it, on a normal unix box. There's a bit more to it -- there's mbx format, which is very nice for speed and multiple access -- but if what you want is *NOT* normal unix users on a normal unix box running a default installation of sendmail or something similar, then you should probably be looking at the Cyrus imapd, which was designed from the start to run on sealed servers, not normal UNIX boxes running a more or less normal mail installation. -- Rich Graves <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> UNet Systems Administrator
