Re: utilisateur backup

2002-07-23 Thread Boris Daix
Sam Vilain [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 Boris Daix [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

- Can I safely give an SSH key to my backup user without any
  passphrase so that it could be automated via cron ?

 You can use `ssh-keygen -f single_action_key' to create a key for remote 
 execution of scripts.

 On the remote end, add this key to the `.ssh/authorized_keys' file.  You 
 should add a forced command so that only one command may be executed with 
 that key.

Good, really interesting !

 For rsync(1), you need to capture the exact switches of the rsync server
 command. 

But I use rsync like a remote copy tool (scp), so do I need this ? If
so, I need tips to better understand what follows... :-)

 To do this, you can use this script on the destination server:

 #!/usr/bin/perl
 open CAPTURE, $ENV{HOME}/capture.log;
 print CAPTURE @ARGV\n;
 close CAPTURE;

 Then add --rsync-path=/path/to/script to your rsync command line.  This
 will leave something similar to the following in the destination
 ~/capture.log:

 --server -vlgtpr --partial . yourhost

 So, you would use an authorized_keys entry like this (all one line):

 command=rsync --server -vlogDtpr --partial . 
 yourhost,no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty,1024
  35 23...2334 Server backup key

 For more complete security, you could add a `chroot' jail to the above
 command.

Are jails useful with rsync used like scp ?

- Is amanda appropriate for this task and would it be more secure
  to use it instead ?
- If it is unsecure, how would I do such backups without having to
  enter passpgrase/passwd ?

 System backups are always an easy entry point, very often they contain
 things like secret keys to encryption, etc that will allow a malicious
 user to pretend to be the machine that they have access to the backups of.
  Protect your backups carefully!

Yes, I've crypted them via gpg :-)

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 analysis and nuclear reactor simulation.


many thanks

-- 
Boris Daix

Feel free to be free, or not to be...


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utilisateur backup

2002-07-19 Thread Boris Daix
Hi all,

   I'd like to make backup via cron and I saw there were a user 
named backup in passwd file. My problem is that the backups should
travel via LAN to another machine (running Woody too), so that
they backup eachother in fact. I'd like to use rsync to transfer only
changes, with SSH to increase security, but my question is :

   - Can I safely give an SSH key to my backup user without any
 passphrase so that it could be automated via cron ?
   - Is amanda appropriate for this task and would it be more secure
 to use it instead ?
   - If it is unsecure, how would I do such backups without having to
 enter passpgrase/passwd ?

Thanks a lot

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Boris Daix

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Re: utilisateur backup

2002-07-19 Thread Boris Daix
Mathias Palm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

[...]
 I am using it to backup a bunch of maschines on one tape also using
 cron. I found it easy to configure and am quite satisfied. You can even
 configure Amanda in a way that it only transfers changes. On the other
 hand, Amanda is meant to dump backups on tapes. I cant tell you if there
 is an easy way to reconfigure it.

No tape device here.

- If it is unsecure, how would I do such backups without having to
  enter passpgrase/passwd ?
 

 What sort of security do you want? Do you want your backups be 
 encrypted? Amanda can't do that, to my knowledge. 

I'd like network transfers to be inexploitable by other parts : only
admins of both machines should be able to get in backups (that implies
file permissions locally, and encrypted communication between stations).

 Amanda provides some sort of restricted host access. But I cant tell, if
 it would retain a determined attacker.

 Otherwise I have not heart of exploits of amanda yet. 

Lets hope we won't.

 Thanks a lot

Again :-)

[...]

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Boris Daix

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Re: utilisateur backup

2002-07-19 Thread Boris Daix
Noah L. Meyerhans [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

[...]
 So the worst that can happen if the key gets compromised is that the
 attacker can trigger a backup of your system.  Conceivably this could be
 a DoS, at worst.  But it's a very common setup.  In fact, the standard
 method of mirroring Debian involves exactly this type of configuration.

What I wonder is how far the backup user can read (or, worst, even write) to
local fs. If it's just able to look at some /home and /var dirs, and
can write only to /var/backups, it would be enough and I'll be quite
confident. But at this time I don't know how to know this.

 - Is amanda appropriate for this task and would it be more secure
   to use it instead ?
 
 I am using it to backup a bunch of maschines on one tape also using
 cron. I found it easy to configure and am quite satisfied. You can even
 configure Amanda in a way that it only transfers changes. On the other
 hand, Amanda is meant to dump backups on tapes. I cant tell you if there
 is an easy way to reconfigure it.

 Amanda has no security.  It does not encrypt any of the data going out
 over the network.  I doesn't support strong host authentication.  It
 can't be tunnelled over ssh.  Tunnelling rdump over ssh is way more
 secure than amanda.  Running amanda over an IPsec link is a good
 approach, and what I use to backup most of my servers.

I don't know IPsec - but I'm too ashame to ask for what it implies
:-)) I'll look for it, but as I won't use amanda ('cause no tape),
backup user may be better if I find what it has access to.

 Amanda provides some sort of restricted host access. But I cant tell, if
 it would retain a determined attacker.

 It supports .amandahosts.  It's similar to .rhosts.  It can also do
 kerberos, but most people don't have a kerberos infrastructure.

 noah

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Thanks

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Boris Daix

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