From: Crist J. Clark (cristjccomcast.net)
Date: Fri Jun 04 2004 - 14:53:38 CDT

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

I made a quick change to syslogd(8) so that it can drop root
privileges immediately after starting up. It opens up the log
sockets (UNIX and network domains) and writes the PID files
before dropping privs. It drops privs before openning log
files and writing to users. Therefore, you would need to
modify your log file permissions appropriately. As for writing
to users, ttys generally are writeable by group tty. The UID
chosen to run syslogd as should be in this group if this feature
is desired.

We haven't had many syslogd(8) vulnerabilities lately, but one
less daemon running as root seems like a Good Thing. I do not
see any drawbacks from a security point of view. The log files
would have to be owned, or otherwise writeable, by this other
user, but so what. Obviously, I may be missing something.

Any interest in this? Let me know if you try it out and any
successes or failures.

Patches! CURRENT and RELENG_4 version attached. The documentation
is included as a patch to the syslogd(8) man page.
--
Crist J. Clark | cjclarkalum.mit.edu
                                   | cjclarkjhu.edu
http://people.freebsd.org/~cjc/ | cjcfreebsd.org

_______________________________________________
freebsd-securityfreebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-security
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-security-unsubscribefreebsd.org"

• text/plain attachment: syslogd.RELENG_4

• text/plain attachment: syslogd.CURRENT

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]