> The past 12 years I worked constantly for companies that had one or > more unix servers and always only a small number of users had an > admin=20 account, all other had 'normal' user accounts.
Anyway, can someone explain to me the security benefit of restricting bind < 1024 to uid 0? At this point I can't see what good it does, and I can see that it does harm. > Even on a single user system I wouldn't recommend to work constantly > as administrator (neither under=20 windows nor under linux). I > prefer to work always with the least possible rights, so that any > virus=20 that might come in, can do fewer harm. (in this=20 sense I > don't trust even myself, although I was=20 never infected in all > those years) No, it's definitely a bad idea to work as root all the time because mistakes can be very bad. I was just explaining why long ago that restriction was implemented. It's ridiculous now. On my server machine, I'm the only one who can log in to it. It would definitely be better if Tomcat could run without uid 0. > All the solutions I've seen in the past for > trustedxxx, had nice features but where so=20 > difficult to configure and maintain, that it was=20 > hard to get more security whithout affecting the=20 > ease of use for the daily work. I think it's just a question of familiarity. Today when you install Linux/*BSD/etc, all the permissions on all the files are set correctly so you don't have to mess around with it. If you had to figure it all out yourself it would be a pain. Actually the capabilities based stuff may make things easier because today, they try to achieve similar results by having multiple users for multiple stuff (a user for lpd, for uucp, etc) and then use group and file perms. It's a confusing mess. It would be much clearer to say: "Sendmail has the capability to bind port 25 and write files in this directory" than to figure out the right combination of suid stuff, tcpwrapper, etc, that will do the right thing. -- To unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Troubles with the list: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
