I know, I accidentally posted that message before completing it, I posted
the rest of it seperately.
I have heard alot of people expressing concer about this behavior of the
JVM of keeping processes running ar root and I fully understand why. The
problem is that if I want to access say Port 80 I have to run tomcat as
root. But I have not been able to figure out a way to downgrade the
privileges of the Tomcat process after it has accessed the privileged
resources. I have been told that Apache can donwgrade the privilege level
of processes after they have accessed privleged resources but how do I do
this to tomcat?
"Ralph Einfeldt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
05.12.2002 12:48
Please respond to "Tomcat Users List"
To: "Tomcat Users List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
cc:
Subject: RE: Why run tomcat as root
I don't think that you are right.
To run tomcat as root means you have less security than having
more security.
You have to be aware that you open a additional potential
security hole for the user that runs tomcat. (That is not
specific to tomcat, that is true for any application)
E.G.: If tomcat or your application contains an error
that let's some user execute a command on the server,
this command will have the rigths of the tomcat user.
If this user is root, the command can do nearly everything
on the server. Otherwise it could just have restricted
access to the system.
If you want to use port 80 it is better to run tomcat behind
a connector, a port mapper or a proxy and use a user with the
least possible rights.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kristj�n R�narsson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Thursday, December 05, 2002 1:34 PM
> To: Tomcat Users List
> Subject: Re: Why run tomcat as root
>
>
The Root account is also preferable beacuse the account and processes
that run under it are considerably better protected than those of a
normal user, provided you have not castrated the Root account security
wise, ie configured it incorrectly. The less secure the account you run
Tomcat under the easyser it is for a malicious user to sabotage your
webserver by editing or deleting files, killing processes and so on.
The ROOT acount is a citadel on a mountain top, very hard for a hacker
to break, much harder than a normal account. If you run Tomcat as root,
only you and those trusted few that you have mady privy to the root
password, can manipulate the Tomcat server.
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