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Date:      Thu, 21 Dec 2000 08:23:37 -0800 (PST)
From:      Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com>
To:        security@FreeBSD.ORG
Cc:        Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@ofug.org>
Subject:   Re: dsniff 2.3 info:
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012210758270.70602-100000@roble.com>
In-Reply-To: <xzppuimf13e.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no>

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On 21 Dec 2000, Dag-Erling Smorgrav wrote:
> Roger Marquis <marquis@roble.com> writes:
> > Bad administrators?  You must be joking.  [it's FreeBSD's fault...]

Dag, I would prefer if you could quote what I said instead of
inserting what you want to hear and attempting to make it look like
that's what I said.

For the record nobody said "it's FreeBSD's fault..." other than
Dag.  The ssh ports, however, are the source of many ssh
identity-has-changed errors (the original point of this thread).
This is the result of some incorrect assumptions on the part of
the ports maintainers and a lack of port standards or enforcement
in general.

> We are eagerly anticipating patches that address the issues you
> mention. You do have patches, don't you?

This answer, as we used to say in the 60s, is a cop-out.  Sysadmins,
though they may be experience juggling various applications, are
not programmers nor should they try to be.  Expecting everyone who
uses FreeBSD to be a developer is neither realistic nor a good way
to encourage a broad user-base.  Administration and programming
are high-level functions and you can't specialize in both, at least
not well.

Ports maintainers, on the other hand, should have a better set of
guidelines to work from.  This is especially the case for security
related applications like ssh.  Just yesterday I ran "cd
/usr/ports/security/openssh; make --prefix=/; make install".  The
port A) ignored the "--prefix", B) ignored the pre-installed OS
binaries, keys, and config files, and C) failed to check inetd.conf
before putting an sshd.sh under /usr/local/etc/rc.d.

The problems with these ports are obvious.  Ignore them if you wish
but at least don't simultaneously claim that they're the result of
"stupid users" or "stupid administrators".

IMHO,
-- 
Roger Marquis
Roble Systems Consulting
http://www.roble.com/




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