On Sun, 5 Oct 2003, Timo Sirainen wrote: > I'd like to know where and how this might be possible without root > privileges? Root can of course do whatever it wants. I really doubt > there's a way for non-root to do it in any sane operating system.
The UNIX world has a very bad history of giving assurances to software developers that such-and-such can be relied upon, and then turning on those developers for having the temerity to rely upon such-and-such. The open source portion of the UNIX world has been particularly bad in undermining long-standing "you can count on this" assumptions. I certainly agree that a sane operating system would not allow an unprivileged user to sniff on a localhost session. I would probably consider such to be safe on my own personal system. On the other hand, UNIX and its variants do numerous other things that I do not consider to be the behavior of a sane operating system. Thus, my opinion of what constitutes the behavior of a sane operating system is not useful in determining what will happen on UNIX. *That* particular lesson has been hammered home many times. I have heard folklore to the effect that it is unsafe to assume that a localhost session is a secure channel. I am unable to find any sort of standard or security document that purports otherwise and/or states that developers can rely upon localhost being a secure channel. The consequence of being excessively cautious is that localhost connections use encryption unnecessarily unless the end user hacks the code. The consequences of misguided trust in the "concensus of experts" are another trail of BUGTRAQ advisories, cracked systems, and years of flames. Please, feel free to do your own hacks to permit password authentication in unencrypted localhost connections. All you have to do is the following two instructions: auth_pla.server = auth_plain_server; mail_parameters (NIL,SET_DISABLEPLAINTEXT,NIL); in some strategic place early in the code. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
