From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Apr 23 9: 8:11 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from tinker.exit.com (tinker.exit.com [206.223.0.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B048537B419 for ; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:08:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from realtime.exit.com (realtime [206.223.0.5]) by tinker.exit.com (8.12.3/8.12.3) with ESMTP id g3NG7wcN078232; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:07:58 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from frank@exit.com) Received: from realtime.exit.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by realtime.exit.com (8.12.2/8.12.2) with ESMTP id g3NG7kwn045254; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:07:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from frank@realtime.exit.com) Received: (from frank@localhost) by realtime.exit.com (8.12.2/8.12.2/Submit) id g3NG7kDh045253; Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:07:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Frank Mayhar Message-Id: <200204231607.g3NG7kDh045253@realtime.exit.com> Subject: Changing defaults versus increased security. In-Reply-To: <20020423.094953.13280392.imp@village.org> To: "M. Warner Losh" Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2002 09:07:46 -0700 (PDT) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: frank@exit.com Organization: Exit Consulting X-Copyright0: Copyright 2002 Frank Mayhar. All Rights Reserved. X-Copyright1: Permission granted for electronic reproduction as Usenet News or email only. X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL95a (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG M. Warner Losh wrote: > : When you change defaults on a running system, you piss off a lot of users. > : Including me. :-) > When we fail to take reasonable steps to preclude intruders from > gaining access to your system, we'd likely piss you off more if you > knew about it :-(. Hey, I intentionally said nothing about the desirability of such a change. I just don't believe that changing the defaults of a running system is a good idea. Perhaps changing the defaults for newly-installed systems _is_ a good idea, about that I have no opinion, but when I do a mergemaster and something very basic stops working, it's not more secure, it's just broken. I don't object to more secure systems (far from it), I just object to sudden changes in systems I run. These systems have _already_ been secured against intrusion; like any administrator worth his salt, I've taken steps to secure the borders of my network(s). Inside my network, though, things are less secure because I know I can trust myself. It seems easy enough to create an /etc/rc.overrides script with a large "Danger Will Robinson" message to annoy a sysadmin into looking at it and containing the old defaults. -- Frank Mayhar frank@exit.com http://www.exit.com/ Exit Consulting http://www.gpsclock.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message