From owner-freebsd-questions  Sun Jul  4 22:47: 7 1999
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From: Jonathon Doran <doranj@Colorado.EDU>
Message-Id: <199907050546.XAA06548@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Subject: Re: Use of user nobody
To: junkmale@xtra.co.nz
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 1999 23:46:59 -0600 (MDT)
Cc: doranj@Colorado.EDU, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <19990704213504.GDNY112692.mta2-rme@wocker> from "Dan Langille" at Jul 5, 99 09:32:15 am
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> > This user has no privilages, can't login, has an invalid password, and
> > doesn't belong to any group.  This limits the ability to exploit bugs in
> > programs running as "nobody".  There is otherwise, nothing special about
> > nobody.
> 
> Given the above, I recall reading somewhere that it's better to create a 
> separate user for apache (such as http).  Any logic behind that reasoning?

Yes.  If you have multiple programs (say Apache and wu_ftp) and you were
to run them under the same UID, it might be possible to use one to mess
with the other.  This would be easier, since they would share ownership
of some files.

However, if each had their own UID, they wouldn't be able to get out of
their sandbox.

Jon Doran


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