From owner-freebsd-security Fri Oct 19 12:35:13 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-security@freebsd.org Received: from va.cs.wm.edu (va.cs.wm.edu [128.239.2.31]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5282F37B407 for ; Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:35:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from corona.cs.wm.edu (corona [128.239.2.50]) by va.cs.wm.edu (8.11.4/8.9.1) with ESMTP id f9JJY3q22851 for ; Fri, 19 Oct 2001 15:34:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from zvezdan@localhost) by corona.cs.wm.edu (8.11.6/8.9.1) id f9JJZAZ03065 for security@FreeBSD.ORG; Fri, 19 Oct 2001 15:35:10 -0400 Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 15:35:10 -0400 From: Zvezdan Petkovic To: security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: KCheckPass -- make it setuid root or not? Message-ID: <20011019153510.A3031@corona.cs.wm.edu> Mail-Followup-To: security@FreeBSD.ORG References: <20011019120706.T25747@squall.waterspout.com> <20011019133826.O4565-100000@palanthas.neverending.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20011019133826.O4565-100000@palanthas.neverending.org>; from ftobin@neverending.org on Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 01:41:34PM -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 01:41:34PM -0400, Frank Tobin wrote: > Will Andrews, at 12:07 -0500 on 2001-10-19, wrote: > > OK, so I keep getting mail every now and then from people who can't > figure out why kcheckpass / kscreensaver won't authenticate their > password(s). It's because I decided to play it safe and made > kcheckpass non setuid root, which it needs in order to call > getpwnam(). > > Why would you choose to make it non setuid root? Isn't the warning that > is associated with all setuid-installed programs enough? Not installing > it setuid-root would be like installing sudo without setuid; it's > pointless without the bit set. > Or a similar reasoning: Is it any safer to have xterm or rxvt run as suid than kcheckpass? -- Zvezdan Petkovic http://www.cs.wm.edu/~zvezdan/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message