freebsd security - Jul 2005 - FW: FW: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

I have grabbed some quotes from various discussions on this topic these are
other peoples opinions!

">Regarding su vs. direct login, you should use su, it doesn't
give
> you much, but it does give you knowledge of who logged in as root
> and when (provided that he did not edit the logs :-)
Yes, it gives you a huge advantage, assuming you disable direct root 
logins and only certain accounts are allowed to run su(1).  The advantage 
is that in order to gain root access, you must compromise either a 
daemon running as root, or an account capable of running su.  This 
decreases your vulnerable profile, as only certain accounts can be used 
to gain root privileges at all."

"> Regarding su vs. direct login, you should use su, it doesn't
give
> you much, but it does give you knowledge of who logged in as root
> and when (provided that he did not edit the logs :-)
And if you follow up by disabling direct root logins, you now must first
authenticate as a user in order to attempt to guess the root password,
and you get those attempts logged. That's a bigger win than logging
successful root logins IMO :-)

The biggest advantage of sudo, though, is less security-related and more
"what did that admin do at 3 am?". Because sudo logs every command,
you
can see just what was done. Obviously, a malicious user could circumvent
this most if not all of the time, but it can be great for seeing what
was done with good intentions."

"Understand I am NOT arguing against sudo.  Properly setup, it's
a wonderful tool for giving the power you want to sub-admins and 
even co-admins get benefit from using it.  But that doesn't mean
that I'd lock myself out of root entirely as Apple has done.  This
is an area where they did it wrong, just like having tcsh as the 
default shell."


And beyond that how many holes you going to create by replacing su with sudo
just because some admin does not know how to configure it correctly?

I too understand the usefulness of the tool but do not replace su with it,
many of us like su and how it operates. My servers for instance have 2
accounts in the wheel group, and su to root is perfect for that application.



- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-security@freebsd.org
[mailto:owner-freebsd-security@freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Mike Hunter
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 11:55 AM
To: Stephen Major
Cc: freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FW: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?

On Jul 21, "Stephen Major" wrote:
> Sudo requires extra configuration that su does not.
> 
> Why should I have to waste my time configuring another app just because a
> handful of people want it? I like su and how it works and I guarantee I am
> not the only one. You want it replaced replace it your self
> cd /usr/ports/security/sudo && make install clean
> 
> That simple! Don't waste our time because you want something to be
easier
> for you
Last week I had to do a little work on a 1980's AT&T Unix box.  I'm
glad
that yours isn't the only opinion that has shaped the evolution of unix,
or else I'd probably still be using such OSes all day!

Sudo is a great tool, and adding it as part of the base system would be
a great way to advance the FreeBSD security and usability baseline.  After
time, maybe enough people would start using sudo in place of su and it
would be time to consider retiring su...a process that has happened
thousands of times as a natural part of an evolving OS.

Mike
_______________________________________________
freebsd-security@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-security
To unsubscribe, send any mail to
"freebsd-security-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.0.1 (Build 2185)

iQEVAwUBQt/yRqKXvLS903/FAQq5xggAnjeB7D1DJXIj64lBCxvRQ/uIsDlXm94h
ey+3c9DLh1jpfUXcNInPi5wSVC8mJDWnu/msT1dWL9hwJvM7+N7WcEgeAOX0D8A2
ZUeE8jhukSLdSDCa1le9htOYkyTgNpgOpqodMeo5p8o/tIvh4YGybC1yQ4gZh2J3
Uq+JmbbciDYesP/NgITlLZei2INAZinhDyQwDkabWiRkrxIWzfYUlhWZpV48H7ov
UiGDMkqMkhqTuMc7H/FuMxMEIKmvEhKYpxI/seY2DFxak2puWwSEU1rVpkzbf5bA
s0G9w0tdxw4ohQXukLG0O2pp+/7DJloJmsTI7+/wKp8eyqsWnAxY6g==jao8
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA512

http://www.freshports.org/security/sudo/


there it is in the ports tree do your research before saying that my claim
is baseless

And stop before you come back with saying you have to configure it.
Because that is exactly my point I do not have to configure anything to use
su.

And no you could not make sudo "out of the box" ready, for
everyone's
application. Otherwise the default configs would already be that way when
you installed it from ports.

I only want 2 users on my system to be in the wheel group and su to full
root.

But the next guy might want sudo and be able to give limited access to to
several "sub-admins"

- From my perspective su is more secure than sudo in the fact that an idiot
admin cannot screw it up. Unless they set some dumb root password for
example: 1234admin


- -----Original Message-----
From: asym [mailto:bsdlists@rfnj.org] 
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 12:05 PM
To: Stephen Major; freebsd-security@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: FW: FW: Adding OpenBSD sudo to the FreeBSD base system?

At 14:41 7/21/2005, Stephen Major wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA512
>
>Sudo requires extra configuration that su does not.
>
>Why should I have to waste my time configuring another app just because a
>handful of people want it? I like su and how it works and I guarantee I am
>not the only one. You want it replaced replace it your self
>cd /usr/ports/security/sudo && make install clean
>
>That simple! Don't waste our time because you want something to be
easier
>for you
No such implication exists.  Your claim is baseless.

If sudo WERE included in the base system, the default configuration COULD 
be setup to mimic the very simplistic behavior of su.  Hence, you would 
have to do absolutely nothing, it would only save work.

I agree that if sudo is to be called as su (via symlink) as someone else 
pointed out, then it should behave the same way, but that's a simple thing 
to do even if sudo doesn't currently support it.  I don't know, I only
use
su long enough to install my "must haves" like sudo, then never again.



-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.0.1 (Build 2185)

iQEVAwUBQt/0XqKXvLS903/FAQpxpggArPEwNlSgmtqgTvKiSHGpaL7V+0eQRkZ8
jlkZS2weOp3Q8mUtuvTDoJK19LbGT5KDAo4LnzOC3s9W1dYrGT/G5u+hbE67Mrtk
pVymrszhRLiZbjGbAQ1q0nA1tYEykkE/xOJ1aTHLg9phct6tM2MEVVXeVGRbgeTN
SawZ6bqzPtbNN5AtbpJcRVUzYgyaE3YNKsRGJXecNu2MKFyk/90C2mOVu1Td3jHf
/iZiXT8RTHl72lLszZlDOmtTzgZ2rzFBraWIiiEwucsaGUJNia9C46PDQJPyAZZS
L1pnvY0UZdrPYheF4FrM6ETMFsjwlNSz3s/SJ3rysMK0bybUo507Iw==zL/5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----