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> > at all.  I went into DrakConf and set the security level to "high" and
> > this fixed the horrific insecurity of the default setup, but it also
> > unfortunately fired up shorewall with settings that prevented me from
> > being able to access the system remotely

I see...but is it really a good idea to permit execute perms to any and 
sundry?  I used to think that if there were a linux virus/worm to be 
concerned about that the worst that could happen under normal circumstances 
is that a user who received and executed a viral script  would possibly trash 
his own home and that's it.  Now I see that this is not accurate...ALL users 
could trash their homes by executing a bad script/executable in ANY infected 
user's home.  The default setup makes this possible...and most <new> users 
wont bother (or think to bother) to change home perms.

praedor

On Monday 30 June 2003 01:10 pm, Vincent Danen wrote:
> On Mon Jun 30, 2003 at 12:46:00PM -0500, Praedor Atrebates wrote:
> > > > For the first time I added a couple more users to my home system.  Up
> > > > 'til now I was the only user.  I found that the default
> > > > behavior/security (not) setting allowed all users to access all other
> > > > user's home directories.  No limits!  What is this?!  That is the
> > > > same as no security
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > 1) Mandrake Control Center
> > > 2) Security
> > > 3) Security Permissions
> > > 4) Choose "editable" from the drop down box
> > > 5) Add /home/* with the permissions you want.
> > >
> > > Next time msec runs, it will reset the permissions on the /home/*
> > > directories. And you won't need the higher security level (with
> > > shorewall).
> >
> > Danka.  This nonetheless begs the question...why should this even be
> > necessary?  By this I mean why should it be necessary to actively alter
> > default settings so that all users don't have access to each other's home
> > dirs?  I am not really faulting Mandrake here (unless their defaut
> > settings and perms are more lenient  than other distro defaults.  To my
> > thinking, the default should never be to permit even read access to
> > another's home. There's no call for that unless some <idiot> user decides
> > to give other people access to his/her home dir.  This accessibility
> > should be a no-no by default regardless of distro.
>
> This was done, IIRC, to allow people to have a ~/public_html/ directory and
> allow apache to enter the home directory so as to read ~/public_html/
> (which would allow someone to do something like
> http://yoursite.com/~preador/). That's pretty much the reasoning for it
> IIRC.  That being said, there is nothing stopping you from doing a higher
> security level or modifying the defaults.
>
> I also believe that a user can enter another user's home dir but will get a
> permission denied if they do an ls.  Other permissions protect the files in
> the homedir.  The homedir should have execute-only perms.  But, taking a
> quick look, it seems that is not the case.  Hmmmm.
>
> That does kind of suck.  msec used to do execute-only perms on homedirs...
> I wonder why it decided that read/execute perms was an ok thing to do.
>
> I'll see if I can't find out.

- -- 
Not a single 9/11 terrorist came from Iraq, nor did a single one train in 
Iraq. Iraq had NOTHING to do with 9/11.
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