Complex security mechanism is unsecure (was Re: non-superuser chown(2)s considered harmful)

[Kristoffer Eriksson]

In article <6874 at titcce.cc.titech.ac.jp> mohta at necom830.cc.titech.ac.jp (Masataka Ohta) writes:
>In general, making some application set-uid to root is more secure
>than making it set-uid to, say, uucp.
>
>In the latter case, you must be careful that no unauthorized person can
>have uucp nor root priviledge.

But that is fairly easy to prevent for a non-user account. Just make it
impossible to login to that account.

(If, in stead, you break into that account by using some bug in some
set-uid program owned by that account, then it wouldn't exactly be more
secure to have that program owned by root, so that is no way to avoid my
argument.)

-- 
Kristoffer Eriksson, Peridot Konsult AB, Hagagatan 6, S-703 40 Oerebro, Sweden
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