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Date:      Thu, 8 Nov 2001 09:01:54 +0100
From:      "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>
To:        "Giorgos Keramidas" <charon@labs.gr>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Re[2]: Tiny starter configuration for FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <002501c1682b$a542b7a0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
References:  <15330.6606.417524.41024@guru.mired.org> <002b01c1635f$5a5f4300$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20011108022328.F79276@hades.hell.gr>

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Currently I have telnetd turned off, and only sshd is running.  I also have all
incoming telnet and ssh traffic blocked at the router, and I only log in from my
tiny LAN.  So I should be safe logging in directly as root, although I might
reconsider if I ever need to log into the system from a remote location.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Giorgos Keramidas" <charon@labs.gr>
To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com>
Cc: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 01:23
Subject: Re: Re[2]: Tiny starter configuration for FreeBSD


> On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 06:29:27AM +0100, Anthony Atkielski wrote:
> > > And note that "massively inadequate" is *not* the same
> > > thing as "massively insecure".
> >
> > Point taken.  In practice, however, administrators tend to drift towards
> > "massively insecure" as they try to overcome "massively inadequate."
> >
> > For example, one change I made to my system was to allow root logins
> > from remote terminals.  I'd prefer to limit remote logins to root to
> > my other machine, which is on the LAN, but I'm not aware of an
> > option to force that, so I had to open root logins to the world.
> > Thus, in order to obtain needed functionality, I had to compromise
> > security far more than I would have liked.
>
> Don't do what `most administrators tend to do'.  Disable root logins
> over the network again :)
>
> Use only su(1) to become root, as shown below:
>
>     % su -
>     Password: ********
>     #
>
> This has the extra feature of having the fact that someone became
> root written at your logs:
>
>     Nov  8 02:19:40 hades su: someuser to root on /dev/ttyp1
>
> Then use SSH to connect to your FreeBSD box, instead of Telnet.
> It does not let passwords and other sensitive data travel unencrypted
> over the wire, and the entire SSH session is encrypted too.
>
>


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