On Mon, 01 Jul 2002 00:10:46 -0600
FemmeFatale <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said with temporary authority

> daRcmaTTeR wrote:
> <Giant snip>
> > And I love the fact that it chroot, (jails) things by default, so
> > there isn't any hair-pulling to get that taken care of.
> > 
> sounds like a cool ftp file program.  stupid question:  why is chroot
> a good thing?
> 
> Jail?  Scuse me i'm slow today :)
> 
> -- 
> Femme
> 
> Good Decisions You boss Made:
> 
> "We'll do as you suggest and go with Linux.  I've always liked that 
> character from Peanuts."
> 
> - Source: Dilbert

Femme,
  In the past script kiddies have used some of the original capabilities
of ftp to login, and take over computers.  ie ftp up a program
(root-kit, etc) then login to the ftp directory compile it and run it. 
When you chroot the program root gets set to the directory the user is
in.  As far as they are concerned there exists nothing higher on the
directory tree than where they are This means that if they do manage to
exploit something the damage they can do is limited to the "jail" that
they are in.  Other advantages include, but not limited to, 

1.  They can only use utilities that exist in that chroot jail ie ls ps
etc are local and any changes made to them aren't going to affect the
box as a whole. 2.  Nib Nosers can't poke around your box and find your
secret stash of Britney Spears photo's 3.  breaking out of the jail is
one more line of defense.

These are but a few reasons why programs get chrooted.  Chroot is also
useful if you have rebooted without running lilo first.  It allows you
to boot from a rescue disk, mount the HDD and run lilo as if your root
was the mount point instead of the real / 

James

> 
> 
> 
> 

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