> Although I agree with most of what you've said, I contend
> that this sort of practice is only one step above the practice
> of associating a custom extension with ColdFusion so that
> your pages do not end with the usual ColdFusion extensions.
> At least the former does prevent one very specific type of
> attack, rather than just delaying the inevitable.
As for comparing it to changing the CF file extensions, sure, it's the same
sort of thing, and I'd agree that, by itself, partitioning doesn't provide
adequate security. However, all other things being equal, it provides better
security than having everything on the same partition. And that's enough for
me to recommend it for security. What happens if you rely solely on ACLs,
but those ACLs get changed incorrectly during server operations - something
I've seen happen before?
In my opinion, a good security policy is one that addresses lots of little
things individually - a layering approach. There are simply too many
variables to rely on a single layer for security, and there are lots of
little steps that you can apply to make things more difficult for an
attacker. Partitioning is one of those things.
> I do not agree, however, that partitioning should be encouraged
> under the guise of enhanced security. Though perhaps "idealistic," :)
> I believe that comprehensive security practices should be
> encouraged at all times, even to the exclusion of practices that
> may be more simple to implement, though less secure. The latter
> seems to encourage a false sense of safety. Perhaps, this is
> because some system administrators hear "partitions are more
> secure" and begin repeating that like a personal mantra without
> a true idea of the scope of that security.
If a sysadmin is lulled into complacency by the use of partitioning, that
sysadmin probably isn't following the security lists or the patch updates
anyway. In that case, the sysadmin is better off with separate partitions.
I don't see anything wrong with recommending both that separate partitions
be used, and ACLs be set properly. If you're lucky, the target of your
recommendations will at least do one of those!
For me, since I end up making a decent number of recommendations like this
to people, it boils down to this. It doesn't hurt, from a security or
management perspective, to separate content using partitions, and it may
help. There's very little cost to doing this, unless you've already
configured your server and it's running. If it may help, and doesn't hurt,
it's a good thing.
Dave Watts, CTO, Fig Leaf Software
http://www.figleaf.com/
voice: (202) 797-5496
fax: (202) 797-5444
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