Adduser devel - Jun 2005 - Open Home directory

Hi,

the adduser package has an option to choose, whether the home directory of
the user will be readable for all users on the system, or not. The default
is, it will be.

This can result in a security hole, when people accept the default without
much reading (if I''m not mistaken, it is not even l10n''d
during install).

Other distros handle this different. So I was really shocked when I noticed
that any user - even nobody - can read the content of it. Also, newly
recreated files are world-readable.

I suggest to put the default on ''No''. If this is not possible
for some
reason, I suggest to write a big warning what that means.

Cheers,

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 10:28:12AM +0200, Christian Knoke
wrote:
> the adduser package has an option to choose, whether the home directory of
> the user will be readable for all users on the system, or not. The default
> is, it will be.
That''s how we always handled things.
> This can result in a security hole, when people accept the default without
> much reading
People who do not read what the distribution shows on installation,
and who do not check permissions before putting a system in multi
user mode should not be in charge of multi user systems.
> (if I''m not mistaken, it is not even l10n''d during
install).
The template is translated to cs, da, de, es, eu, fr, it, ja, nl,
pt_BR, ru and uk. If the translated versions are not shown, please
file a bug against the appropriate parts of the system.
> I suggest to put the default on ''No''.
The default of a package this important is not going to change without
a _very_ good reason. Local stupidity and laziness does not count.
> If this is not possible for some
> reason, I suggest to write a big warning what that means.
How do you suggest guaranteeing that people will read that warning
after having ignored the warning in the question template? IMO, this
doesn''t solve the issue.

Frankly, I do not plan to change the default to have people yelling at
me that the default permissions are too tight. The issue is
configurable with a sensible default that everybody is used to.

If you do not agree, please talk to the technical committee.

Greetings
Marc
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