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Re: the netbase/inetd conspiracy



Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 11:58:07AM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
>> Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> [...]
>>> As far as I can tell, the only intended effect of deleting the file
>>> is to make inetd abort when it starts, to ensure that it will never run.
>> [...]
>>> At first glance, I can't find any other way to do it.
>> [...]

> Note that you snipped the part where I said that this doesn't actually work.

Hello!
That is because I had nothing to say about /that/. ;-)

>> Add exit 0 at the top of /etc/init.d/inetd

> That only helps if the init script is the only way to start inetd.
> If you want to disable it for security reasons, and want to make sure
> it can't start even by accident, then that's not good enough.

I can only think of two ways it could accidentally started are:
* big bug: /etc/init.d/inetd is overwritten or another (malicious)
  package calls /usr/sbin/inetd directly.

Imho this is _extremely_ unlikely if you don't use sid.

* root is silly and executes /usr/sbin/inetd directly.

You cannot really protect yourself against this kind of error, root
has to know what (s)he is doing.

> (On the other hand, I wouldn't stop short of actually removing the
> program in that case.  I disagree with Thomas here.)

If I were that cautious I'd remove it and use equivs to keep dpkg
happy.
           cu andreas
-- 
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