Re: Mutt & tmp files

[Wade Richards <wrichard@direct.ca>]

Hi Craig,

Sorry to pick on your response, it was only one of many that said
basically the same thing.  

On Thu, 15 Nov 2001 10:52:35 PST, Craig Dickson writes:
>[...] Even if those keys
>are encrypted and require the user to enter a passphrase every time
>they're used, root can get the passphrase with a tty sniffer. Short of
>biometric authentication, how can you stop root if he knows what he's
>doing? And I imagine even biometrics can be compromised if you can
>modify the software involved.
>
>I still say the bottom line is, if you don't trust root, don't use his
>machine.

This is the sort of absolutist nonsense that gives security experts a
bad name.  After all, anyone armed with a chainsaw can cut through a
solid oak door in a matter of hours, so why bother installing a deadbolt
on your door?

Some security is better than no security.  More security is better than
less security.  If you find a security flaw in a system, you should try
to fix that flaw, even if the system is not otherwise perfect.

For example, I'm root on my machine.  I'm nosy.  I'd like to know what
the people who use my machine are saying about me in e-mail.  If I can
grab the contents of a file from /tmp, I just might do that.

But I'm also lazy.  I'm not going to spend hours or weeks writing code to
install a tty sniffer, find enough disk space for the logs, and search
through the log files for something interesting.  I'm a nozy root,
I'm not a masochistic root.

Also, what makes you thing root "knows what he's doing?"  I suspect that 
many people with the "root" password could not install a tty sniffer or 
any other spying tool unless they could type "apt-get install ttysniffer".

    --- Wade