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Date:      Fri, 15 Sep 2000 18:21:46 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Daniel Eischen <eischen@vigrid.com>
To:        Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <Cy.Schubert@uumail.gov.bc.ca>
Cc:        Will Andrews <will@physics.purdue.edu>, Steve Kargl <sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu>, arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Rsh/Rlogin/Rcmd & friends 
Message-ID:  <Pine.SUN.3.91.1000915175640.8033A-100000@pcnet1.pcnet.com>
In-Reply-To: <200009152136.e8FLaou26312@cwsys.cwsent.com>

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On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group wrote:
> In message <Pine.SUN.3.91.1000915165626.99A-100000@pcnet1.pcnet.com>, 
> Daniel Ei
> schen writes:
> > On Fri, 15 Sep 2000, Will Andrews wrote:
> > > On Fri, Sep 15, 2000 at 04:24:23PM -0400, Daniel Eischen wrote:
> > > > > What consequences?  Remember, we'll still have ports for these things.
> > > > > It only matters as far as new installations go.  Post-install operation
> > s
> > > > > are unimportant.
> > > > 
> > > > Wrong.  If that were true tcsh wouldn't be in the base system today.
> > > 
> > > You misinterpreted me.  I meant in this specific case, post-install
> > > operation doesn't matter.  People can use ssh to get in the machines to
> > > do things rsh/rlogin/rcmd offer.
> > 
> > No, you haven't proven to me that removal of rsh/rlogin/rcmd doesn't
> > break anything like remote backups.  As Steve Kargl wrote:
> > 
> > > > What are the consequences of your proposal with the use of
> > > > rdump/rrestore from another (non-FreeBSD) machine into a
> > > > tape drive equipped FreeBSD box?
> > 
> > To me that means that something that use to work "out of the box" will
> > not work without adding the necessary port(s).  Sure, you can argue that
> > you can easily install the port, but the same could be said to folks
> > that wanted tcsh as their default shell.
> 
> So what!  That's the price of security.  I believe that the 
> telnet/ftp/"r" commands shouldn't even be ports.  We need to make it 
> difficult to install unsafe software on the system.  That way the admin 
> would have to go to all the trouble to find the source for unsafe 
> software somewhere on the Net, port it, and install it.  Then it's not 
> FreeBSD's fault if that admin's system is compromised.

It was difficult enough to get our users comfortable enough with
even using telnet and ftp, and I don't want to waste any more of
my software engineering time in user education.

If you want a anally secure box by default, run OpenBSD.  But
you don't need to _remove_ telnet,ftp,r* from the src tree to
get a secure system from installation.  You could easily have
an install option that removes (or doesn't install) your unsafe
programs.

And I am against 10^6 install options, regardless of whether
Linux, Solaris, or any other UN*X does it that way.

-- 
Dan Eischen


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