From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Sep 9 8: 4:20 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.neca.com (mail.neca.com [204.213.250.15]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5164137B406 for ; Sun, 9 Sep 2001 08:04:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (poyner@localhost) by mail.neca.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id f89F46I21442 for ; Sun, 9 Sep 2001 11:04:06 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: mail.neca.com: poyner owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 9 Sep 2001 11:04:06 -0400 (EDT) From: Brandon Poyner X-X-Sender: To: Subject: Re: really nice FreeBSD security feature.... In-Reply-To: <20010909015540.A49564@xor.obsecurity.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sun, 9 Sep 2001, Kris Kennaway wrote: >> There's a big screed by RMS somewhere about how root wants to be free >> and how he hax0red su back in his salad days to allow anyone to su to >> root..I guess that's why Linnex does it. I can't find any trace of it on gnu.org's web site, but searching for "stallman su wheel" on google turns up plenty of hits. > Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman) > > Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the > rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to > seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system > and keeping it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this > coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I > wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.) > > However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su > mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes > with the ordinary users, he can tell the rest. The wheel group feature > would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers. > > I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are > used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you > might find this idea strange at first. -- Brandon Lee Poyner, Unix Systems Engineer brandon@thebiz.net BiznessOnline.com, Inc. http://www.BiznessOnline.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message