Re: A new model for ports and kernel security?

Krzysztof Halasa
2003-10-02T16:13:24Z

John Lange <john.lange@bighostbox.com> writes:

> My understanding is that this is a hold-over from ancient days gone past
> where it was meant to be a security feature. Since only root processes
> can listen on ports less than 1024, you could "trust" any connection
> made to a low port to be "secure". In other words, nobody could be
> "bluffing" on a telnet port that didn't have root access therefore it
> was "safe" to type in your password.

It was for rlogin-like accesses, too - the server knew the client is
a suid and trusted program.
Think - NFS.

> Are not processes forced to run as root (at least at startup) that have
> security holes in them not the leading cause of "remote root exploits"?

Not commonly. They usually change ownership to something like www.www
and that is what the exploit gains first.
--
Krzysztof Halasa, B*FH