Re: Rationale
On Mon, 2003-12-01 at 08:13, Karsten M. Self wrote:
> on Sun, Nov 30, 2003 at 11:01:35PM +0100, John Smith (netman1@home.nl) wrote:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > checked google, asked this before on irc, didn't get a
> > usable answer (can't find any use of /etc/login.defs).
> >
> > What is the rationale behind the PATH environment variable?
> > Running woody I get
> >
> > /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
> >
> > as a normal user. As root I get
> >
> > /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:
> > /usr/bin/X11
> >
> > Thinking security I would expect them the other way around.
>
> Then change it.
>
> If you're not allowing world write to /usr/local/(s)bin, you should be
> OK. The usual justification is that your locally defined commands
> superscede system commands.
>
>
> Peace.
Gentlemen,
thanks for your remarks, they answer most of my questions,
as did a thorough grep session on debian-policy, (thanks Paul). What
I'm bothered with is that convenience takes precedence over security
in this case. The example of an [evil/compromised] application
manager with write access to one of the /local directories, who
inserts a trojan named passwd is probably obvious to all. <Asbestos>
Two other os-es that I'm thoroughly familiar with, Netware and
Windows, insert for this exact reason the system paths before the
local paths. </Asbestos>
Karstens remark that I'm allowed to change this, brings the
obvious question: does this break things? So if I change the default
paths to /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin
and /bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin, will this prevent things from
working?
Last extra question: does /etc/login.defs work or not?
Sincerly,
Jan.
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