From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Feb 11 20:35:41 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4320A16A4CE for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:35:41 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mirapoint1.tis.cwru.edu (mirapoint1.TIS.CWRU.Edu [129.22.104.46]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CF4743D2F for ; Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:35:40 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from ttt@cwru.edu) Received: from [129.22.151.155] (tagon.ENGINEERING.CWRU.Edu [129.22.151.155]) by mirapoint1.tis.cwru.edu (MOS 3.5.4-GR) with ESMTP id DYE58047 (AUTH ttt); Fri, 11 Feb 2005 15:35:20 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <420D1705.4060802@cwru.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 15:35:17 -0500 From: Tom Trelvik User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Macintosh/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <8ca932905021112136ad00369@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <8ca932905021112136ad00369@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: /tmp on same partition as / X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:35:41 -0000 Chad Morland wrote: > In your opinion is having /tmp on the same partition as / really THAT > bad in this case? I'm just wondering cause some people have mentioned > that its a major security risk. Really, I don't think it is for what > this box is doing. It's obviously a much bigger security risk on a multiuser machine, but even without that being the case, I'm assuming the machine will be providing some sort of network service? Then it can still be a risk worth taking into account. One or more network services may be making use of /tmp, and if so an unauthenticated external user could plausibly find ways to make those services max out their usage of /tmp, possibly filling your root partition in the process. Even without worrying at all about malicious intent, /tmp on / makes it very easily to *accidentally* fill your root partition, but'll still be a pain for you to have to deal with it if that happens. More seriously, a vulnerability could be found in one of those services that could depend on files in /tmp being executable (which should never be true). With a separate /tmp partition, you can easily have it mounted with the noexec option for an added layer of security, so that even if they create a malicious executable in /tmp, they won't be able to execute it without moving it to another file system, which would probably require they already have shell access, defeating the purpose. Tom