Date: Mon, 6 Sep 1999 10:48:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Tom <tom@uniserve.com> To: Brad Knowles <blk@skynet.be> Cc: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no>, Pascal Hofstee <daeron@Wit401305.student.utwente.nl>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: softupdates in latest build? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9909061043160.13016-100000@shell.uniserve.ca> In-Reply-To: <v0420552cb3f9a8f52804@[195.238.1.121]>
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> Once on a box, it's trivially easy to get root. In fact, with > various rootkits lying around, it's easy to do this programmatically > and gain root access to hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of > machines in just a few minutes. Uhh... this isn't true at all. It is far from trivial to get root. Show me a rootkit that works on 3.2-stable. > However, it might be a bit more difficult to script creating and > installing a new kernel to turn on the ability for people to do > password sniffing. If this feature isn't enabled by default, you at > least have the chance that it would be more noticable for them to > build and install a new sniffing-capable kernel, and increase the > chance by just that smidgen more that people would actually see > anomolous behaviour when their machines are compromised, and > potentially be capable of preventing further damage to their networks > and systems. This doesn't make any sense. Basically you are saying that it is real easy to break in, so "password sniffing ability" should not be available because it will be easy to tell if crackers try to turn it on. First of all, it isn't easy to break into an up to date system. And second if you have so many clear text passwords floating on your network, you've got a much bigger security problem. Besides, most ethernets are switched these days, making password sniffing for anything but connections to or from the machine the sniffer is running on completely useless. > -- > These are my opinions -- not to be taken as official Skynet policy > ____________________________________________________________________ > |o| Brad Knowles, <blk@skynet.be> Belgacom Skynet NV/SA |o| > |o| Systems Architect, News & FTP Admin Rue Col. Bourg, 124 |o| > |o| Phone/Fax: +32-2-706.11.11/12.49 B-1140 Brussels |o| > |o| http://www.skynet.be Belgium |o| > \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ > Unix is like a wigwam -- no Gates, no Windows, and an Apache inside. > Unix is very user-friendly. It's just picky who its friends are. > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message > > Tom Vice-President Uniserve To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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