security for a home system
Reflecting on recent posts re allowing root login (related, but I didn't
want to steal the thread), I'm wondering about a home network and what
to bother with. There's a touch of devil's advocate in this but the
concept that physical access == root access causes one to wonder.
If I have two boxes, with two users, linked by ethernet and one box is
on dial-up to the ISP, with nothing listening on external ports except
the ntp daemon, what is a reasonable stance on security?
Given that anyone who breaks into the house will have physical access to
the consoles anyway, do I need a whiz-bang long root password, strong
passwords on the regular uses, and all the other hypervigalance?
If ssh isn't even listening on external interfaces, does it matter if I
allow root to ssh (useful for rsyncing backups between the boxes)?
Why bother to rsync instead of just nfs mounting the backup repository?
If I need to run a backup, other than it being 'proper', why not just
login as root instead of myself and su?
Note that I am _not_ suggesting that I just do everything as root; then
I loose the protection from myself.
Doug.
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