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Date:      Wed, 12 Aug 1998 12:21:10 -0400
From:      Louis Theran <k@yt.to>
To:        freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Possible security "risk" in ftp client
Message-ID:  <19980812122110.A1446@yt.to>
In-Reply-To: <XFMail.980811163822.mtaylor@cybernet.com>; from Mark J. Taylor on Tue, Aug 11, 1998 at 04:38:22PM -0400
References:  <XFMail.980811163822.mtaylor@cybernet.com>

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On Tue, Aug 11, 1998 at 04:38:22PM -0400, Mark J. Taylor wrote:
> 
> The neat-o FTP client program in FreeBSD "/usr/bin/ftp" has a
> cool but horrible feature:  you can specify the user name and
> password to use via the command line (in the URL), as in:
>   /usr/bin/ftp ftp://myname@mypass/ftp.freebsd.org/
> 
> This is actually quite bad: any "ps -ax" will show the username
> and password.  Using setproctitle(3) would be an attempt to close
> this, but it would create a race condition.
> 
> The program "/usr/bin/fetch" does it better: use the environment
> variables FTP_LOGIN and FTP_PASSWORD.

That is even worse, since you can still use ps axeww to see the
environment, and people tend to leave the env vars set all the time.

^L

-- 
Louis Theran
"Te occidere possunt, sed te edere non possunt nefas quo est."
PGP welcome; key at: k-pgpkey@yt.to

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