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Stewart Stremler wrote:
> /. picked up this article, and despite a lot of heat and noise, nobody
> _has_ provided a good answer (as of when I read the comments), at least
> for a single-user (i.e. home) box.

> And nobody has even pointed out that if I can compromise your user account
> on your single-user machine, I can also (eventually) gain root.

Sure you can. But we want security in depth, right? Several layers since
no one layer is ever likely to be perfect.

> My personal opinion is that not-logging-in-as-root is just a _first_
> step, useless without all the rest.  I should NEVER /have/ to become root
> except in dire circumstances that also warrant booting into single-user mode.
> So long as you structure a system where there are times when you NEED to
> gain superuser access for routine tasks, you have a potential security
> problem.  "We're better than MSWindows" is damn faint praise.

Precisely! It is just a first step. We agree completely here. And better
than Windows is indeed faint praise. But when you are being compared
with Windows it does have to be said.


> Heh. Tracy and I have a long running disagreement about what constitutes
> security on a Linux box. :)

Hmm... I'm not so sure about that. I bet we agree on the most important
aspects of what constitutes security on a Linux box.

> -Stewart "Do you mount /home noexec? Is /usr ro? Why not?" Stremler

/home as noexec? Wouldn't that prevent you from installing any
executables at all into your own ~/bin dir? Not sure what that would
really buy me. Making /usr ro is a good idea I had never really
considered before though. I never write anything into /usr and always
put stuff into /usr/local. Although on occasion a system patch/update
from yum might try to change something in /usr but that is rare enough
that I can remount rw for that.

- --
Tracy R Reed
http://[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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