Joep, Thanks for your response, please see my comments inline...
Joep Vesseur wrote: > On 11/17/08 20:19, James Gates wrote: > > >> [1] The way dante server is implemented, it does not confirm to the >> recommended practice in Solaris of using the privilege mechanism. The >> server implementation depends on the privileged and notprivileged users >> configured, instead of adding and releasing privileges to the users. >> Does the ARC approve of such implementation to be integrated into Solaris? >> >> [2] Dante server uses Solaris PAM for authentication which requires the >> privileged user to be 'root'. Hence, the privileged user (i.e. root) >> will have all the privileges even when not all of them are required. >> This is not the current recommended practice, but is this acceptable at >> all? >> > > The server only needs to run as root if it needs to read files that are > only accessible by root. What I don't get from the documentation is whether > the user/password information is stored in the normal Solaris repositories > (files/nis/ldap/etc) or whether there is a separate database containing > the username/password pairs for "socks-access". > Dante does not maintain a separate database for the username/password pairs. It relies on the native database (/etc/passwd/ldap). > If there is a separate database, there might not be a need to run as root at > all. > > If the normal UNIX accounts are used for authentication there might be such a > need. I'd be slightly surprised, though, to see an internet-facing machine > with access to all username/password pairs used on the intranet. > Yes, thats exactly why I ask. The implementation is such that it switches to effective euid of user.notprivileged as configured (per the proposed solution for the vanilla configuration as 'root') just before attempting a task that needs privileges and switches back to notprivileged uid immediately after the task/operation is over. I am not very sure how vulnerable the setup would be to attacks, if euid is root during the privileged operation?? Mayuresh
