Re: Su & Security

[Ray Olszewski]

I don't quite understand your questions, Peter. "su" is an application used to change userid, usually (but not always) from an ordinary userid to superuser. So I have to guess a bit in responding, below, about what you are actually asking.

At 05:24 PM 12/21/02 +0800, Peter wrote:

Season Greetings

Is it a security risk when connected/ing to the Internet if

a) a terminal is open under su

Do you just mean that a console (or xterm or eterm) is open by the root userid? It would be unusual for this by itself to be a security risk.

b) an application like gtkdial must be opened as su to connect

Dialers normally need to run suid to access the modem device. (There are alternatives to this, though -- on my systems, all /dev/ttyS* devices are in group "dialout" and mode 660, so a dialer app need not be suid.) Unless the app itself has a security problem (and while gtkdial itself is probably pretty much secure, I have no idea what apps you might think are "like" gtkdial), this should be no problem.

c) an application like kppp needs the root password to be accessible

I can't figure out what you mean by "accessible" here (or, once again, what apps "like" covers), so I can't really answer this one. The natural risk to think of is that you might, for some reason, store the root password in a plaintext file somewhere on the system ... but I can't imagine your not seeing the security in risk in doing that without help from this list.


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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