Getting rid of the root account

[John F. Haugh II]

In article <12148 at bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> jfc at athena.mit.edu (John F Carr) writes:
>In article <1566 at mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse) writes:
>Before allowing mount access to someone, make sure that all your system
>directories are opened by some process (so you can't mount over them).
>Otherwise you may find somebody else's /etc mounted over your own (for
>example), at which point nosuid is no longer effective (there are a number
>of less obvious directories, depending on your system).

I was laying in bed thinking exactly this just last night ...

I had long wondered why login should be in /etc rather than /bin and
overmounting system directories makes the perfect case.  I might
remember to protect /etc from being overmounted; will I remember to
protect /bin and others where system programs reside?

This problem of trusted programs executing non-trusted programs by
accident causes UNIX to be inherently untrustable.  No trusted program
should ever execute any untrusted program.  UNIX completely lacks this
concept.
-- 
John F. Haugh II                        +-Button of the Week Club:-------------
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