Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:48:13 -0400 From: Justin Hibbits <jrh29@eecs.cwru.edu> To: Mike Jakubik <mikej@rogers.com> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: ~/.hosts patch Message-ID: <DDD6F0F2-82B9-4E31-96E4-68E265CE5141@eecs.cwru.edu> In-Reply-To: <4498DF20.8020803@rogers.com> References: <C41481BC-89F3-457E-9FD0-CB85CE7B93E7@eecs.cwru.edu> <4498D108.90907@rogers.com> <20060621053007.GA3320@odin.ac.hmc.edu> <4498DF20.8020803@rogers.com>
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On Jun 21, 2006, at 01:54 , Mike Jakubik wrote: > Brooks Davis wrote: >> On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 12:54:32AM -0400, Mike Jakubik wrote: >> >>> Justin Hibbits wrote: >>> >>>> Hey folks, got an interesting patch. This adds a ~/.hosts file >>>> (personal version of /etc/hosts). It was written against 6- >>>> STABLE about a week before 6.1 was released, and has been >>>> sitting collecting dust for the last month and a half. >>>> Currently it augments /etc/hosts instead of replacing it or >>>> prepending it. Any comments? One suggestion that was made was >>>> to make it an nss module so that it could be controlled by the >>>> admin. It probably could use some cleanup as well, just putting >>>> it out here for proof of concept for now, and some direction. >>>> >>> Just what exactly is the point of having a user specified hosts >>> file? Seems like a bad idea to me, in terms of security. >>> >> >> It's useful for cases where you want to add shortcuts to hosts as >> a user >> or do interesting ssh port forwarding tricks in some weird cases >> where >> you must connect to localhost:port as remotehost:port due to >> client/server protocol bugs. >> >> This patch appears to only support ~/.hosts for non-suid binaries >> which >> is the only real security issue. Any admin relying on host to IP >> mapping for security for ordinary users is an idiot so that case >> isn't >> worth worrying about. Doing this as a separate nss module probably >> makes sense, but I personally like the feature. >> > > Of course relying on /etc/hosts entries for security alone is > indeed not a good idea, however an Admin may choose to resolve and > therefore route specified hostnames via /etc/hosts. The user should > not be able to overwrite these, if this behavior is true, then it > seems like a reasonable change to me, otherwise it not only seems > to be a security problem, but also a breach of POLA. > In the next couple weeks, when I get some time, I will make it a NSS module, so that it can be controlled by the admin. - Justin
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