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Date:      Mon, 18 Nov 1996 08:22:54 -0700 (MST)
From:      Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com>
To:        Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.tfs.com>
Cc:        freebsd-security@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: BoS: Exploit for sendmail smtpd bug (ver. 8.7-8.8.2). 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.95.961118081010.4525A-100000@alive.ampr.ab.ca>
In-Reply-To: <9172.848302243@critter.tfs.com>

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What does sendmail need to do WRT binding to ports that a webserver
doesn't?  Programs such as webservers work quite well with a parent
process running as root that binds to the port and forks childs running as
some non-root uid to handle requests.  Why couldn't (this part) of
sendmail's problems be fixed the same way? 

On Mon, 18 Nov 1996, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> What we REALLY need, is a way for root, to hand out certain priviledges.
> 
> Imagine this:
> 
> 	sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.uidforport.25=`id -ur smtp`
> 	sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.uidforport.20=`id -ur ftp`
> 	sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.uidforport.21=`id -ur ftp`
> 	sysctl -w net.inet.tcp.uidforport.119=`id -ur nntp`
> 
> This means that users with UID smtp can bind to socket 25 (aka smtp),
> and so on.  Now sendmail NEVER needs to be root.
> 
> How's that for security ?




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