Sponsored Content
Full Discussion: Vendor root access
Top Forums Programming Open Source Vendor root access Post 302975275 by gull04 on Friday 10th of June 2016 04:23:51 AM
Old 06-10-2016
Hi Herb,

I might be a bit old fashioned here, but it used to be part of the SA's job to ensure that no one other than the SA had access to the root account. It also used to be drummed into SA's that any application that had to be installed as root was basically flawed.

From a security perspective any such application was a likely candidate for an exploit, so should not be allowed. As to giving an external vendor root access, not going to happen on my watch - why?

A real example - I have had a black box system delivered from a major international telecommunications company, complete with two back door (UID 0:GID 1) accounts setup. Additionally in the applications directory there was a SUID file called xyzzy which turned out to be a copy of the /usr/bin/ksh binary.

I would trust no person outside the systems admin team, where the requirement was to have the root password - in some cases I wouldn't trust people in the team, but that was for a different reason.

Regards

Gull04
This User Gave Thanks to gull04 For This Post:
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Linux

how to access root priveliges if root password is lost

wish to know how to access root password it root password is forgotten in linux (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: wojtyla
1 Replies

2. SCO

root access

We have SCO 5.0.5 and can't log into system as "root". The system indicates the password is incorrect. No one knows what happened. How can we resolve this issue.. Are there files we can restore from backup...? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.. (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: RBurer
2 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

To What files root does not have access to??

Hi, I just wanted to know to what files root does not have access, not even read....I read that .profile for any user is the only file which root cannot access is it true..??...If we have to use passwords and ID's in a script can we use them in .profile and call them as parameters..??? ... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: mgirinath
3 Replies

4. Solaris

Security of root access

Hi, The security auditor give a this statement , what to do ? On my solaris system (S10) "The User ID "root" should not be used on the system - the su and the priviledged account should be used from each administrator for accountability purposes" What to do ? (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: falcon16
3 Replies

5. AIX

root access

Hello I have a question. I have a box with Aix 5.3 but I want to disable root access direct from any terminal or console. I mean If I want to login to 10.10.10.10 login:root password ********* Root access is not permited Which file I have to edit. to the users first login with... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: lo-lp-kl
4 Replies

6. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How to allow access to some commands having root privleges to be run bu non root user

hi i am new to unix and i have abig task. i have to \run particular commands having root privileges from a non root user. i know sudo is one of the way but i need sum other approach kindly help Thanks (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: suryashikha
5 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to give root access to non root user?

Currently in my system Red Hat is installed. And Many user connect to my machine via SSH Techia Terminal. I want to give some users a root level access. Can anyone please help me how to make it possible. I too searched on the Google but didn't find the correct way Regards ADI (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: adisky123
4 Replies

8. SuSE

Auditors want more security with root to root access via ssh keys

I access over 100 SUSE SLES servers as root from my admin server, via ssh sessions using ssh keys, so I don't have to enter a password. My SUSE Admin server is setup in the following manner: 1) Remote root access is turned off in the sshd_config file. 2) I am the only user of this admin... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: dvbell
6 Replies

9. Ubuntu

Root access that can't change root password?

We are having a little problem on a server. We want that some users should be able to do e.g. sudo and become root, but with the restriction that the user can't change root password. That is, a guarantee that we still can login to that server and become root no matter of what the other users will... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: 244an
2 Replies

10. OS X (Apple)

Root access in OSX 10.12.2.

Mac users... I updated this MBP from OSX 10.12.1 to the brand new OSX 10.12.2 two days ago. A week ago I installed the Xcode suite. Now the QT shell audio capture in another recent thread is broken when exporting a file. It gives an error in a window, paraphrasing, The action is not... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: wisecracker
4 Replies
SYSUSERS.D(5)                                                       sysusers.d                                                       SYSUSERS.D(5)

NAME
sysusers.d - Declarative allocation of system users and groups SYNOPSIS
/etc/sysusers.d/*.conf /run/sysusers.d/*.conf /usr/lib/sysusers.d/*.conf DESCRIPTION
systemd-sysusers uses the files from sysusers.d directory to create system users and groups at package installation or boot time. This tool may be used to allocate system users and groups only, it is not useful for creating non-system (i.e. regular, "human") users and groups, as it accesses /etc/passwd and /etc/group directly, bypassing any more complex user databases, for example any database involving NIS or LDAP. CONFIGURATION DIRECTORIES AND PRECEDENCE
Each configuration file shall be named in the style of package.conf or package-part.conf. The second variant should be used when it is desirable to make it easy to override just this part of configuration. Files in /etc/sysusers.d override files with the same name in /usr/lib/sysusers.d and /run/sysusers.d. Files in /run/sysusers.d override files with the same name in /usr/lib/sysusers.d. Packages should install their configuration files in /usr/lib/sysusers.d. Files in /etc/sysusers.d are reserved for the local administrator, who may use this logic to override the configuration files installed by vendor packages. All configuration files are sorted by their filename in lexicographic order, regardless of which of the directories they reside in. If multiple files specify the same path, the entry in the file with the lexicographically earliest name will be applied. All later entries for the same user and group names will be logged as warnings. If the administrator wants to disable a configuration file supplied by the vendor, the recommended way is to place a symlink to /dev/null in /etc/sysusers.d/ bearing the same filename. CONFIGURATION FILE FORMAT
The file format is one line per user or group containing name, ID, GECOS field description and home directory: #Type Name ID GECOS Home directory u httpd 440 "HTTP User" u authd /usr/bin/authd "Authorization user" g input - - m authd input u root 0 "Superuser" /root Empty lines and lines beginning with the "#" character are ignored, and may be used for commenting. Type The type consists of a single letter. The following line types are understood: u Create a system user and group of the specified name should they not exist yet. The user's primary group will be set to the group bearing the same name. The user's shell will be set to /sbin/nologin, the home directory to the specified home directory, or / if none is given. The account will be created disabled, so that logins are not allowed. g Create a system group of the specified name should it not exist yet. Note that u implicitly create a matching group. The group will be created with no password set. m Add a user to a group. If the user or group do not exist yet, they will be implicitly created. r Add a range of numeric UIDs/GIDs to the pool to allocate new UIDs and GIDs from. If no line of this type is specified, the range of UIDs/GIDs is set to some compiled-in default. Note that both UIDs and GIDs are allocated from the same pool, in order to ensure that users and groups of the same name are likely to carry the same numeric UID and GID. Name The name field specifies the user or group name. The specified name must consist only of the characters a-z, A-Z, 0-9, "_" and "-", except for the first character which must be one of a-z, A-Z or "_" (i.e. numbers and "-" are not permitted as first character). The user/group name must have at least one character, and at most 31. It is strongly recommended to pick user and group names that are unlikely to clash with normal users created by the administrator. A good scheme to guarantee this is by prefixing all system and group names with the underscore, and avoiding too generic names. For m lines, this field should contain the user name to add to a group. For lines of type r, this field should be set to "-". ID For u and g, the numeric 32-bit UID or GID of the user/group. Do not use IDs 65535 or 4294967295, as they have special placeholder meanings. Specify "-" for automatic UID/GID allocation for the user or group. Alternatively, specify an absolute path in the file system. In this case, the UID/GID is read from the path's owner/group. This is useful to create users whose UID/GID match the owners of pre-existing files (such as SUID or SGID binaries). The syntax "uid:gid" is also supported to allow creating user and group pairs with different numeric UID and GID values. The group with the indicated GID must get created explicitly before or it must already exist. For m lines, this field should contain the group name to add to a user to. For lines of type r, this field should be set to a UID/GID range in the format "FROM-TO", where both values are formatted as decimal ASCII numbers. Alternatively, a single UID/GID may be specified formatted as decimal ASCII numbers. GECOS A short, descriptive string for users to be created, enclosed in quotation marks. Note that this field may not contain colons. Only applies to lines of type u and should otherwise be left unset, or be set to "-". Home Directory The home directory for a new system user. If omitted, defaults to the root directory. It is recommended to not unnecessarily specify home directories for system users, unless software strictly requires one to be set. Only applies to lines of type u and should otherwise be left unset, or be set to "-". IDEMPOTENCE
Note that systemd-sysusers will do nothing if the specified users or groups already exist, so normally, there is no reason to override sysusers.d vendor configuration, except to block certain users or groups from being created. SEE ALSO
systemd(1), systemd-sysusers(8) systemd 237 SYSUSERS.D(5)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 09:53 PM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy