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Date:      Mon, 27 Jul 1998 08:37:15 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org>
To:        "Jan B. Koum " <jkb@best.com>
Cc:        security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: files in /var/log
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980727083240.7733D-100000@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980727025241.7514A-100000@shell6.ba.best.com>

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Jan,

On my own machines I have added a "logger" group and set permissions in
this manner:

/var/cron/log           root.loguser    640  3     100  *     Z
/var/log/amd.log        root.loguser    644  7     100  *     Z
/var/log/kerberos.log   root.loguser    640  7     100  *     Z
/var/log/lpd-errs       root.loguser    644  7     100  *     Z
/var/log/maillog        root.loguser    644  7     *    24    Z
/var/log/messages       root.loguser    644  5     *   168    Z
/var/log/slip.log       root.loguser    640  3     100  *     Z
/var/log/ppp.log        root.loguser    640  3     100  *     Z
/var/log/wtmp           root.loguser    644  52    *    168   ZB
/var/log/auth           root.loguser    640  14    *    168   Z
# my stuff
/var/log/ftpd.log       root.loguser    640  3     *    168   Z
/var/log/pop.log        root.loguser    640  3     *    72    Z
/var/log/kadmind.syslog root.loguser    640  14    *    168   Z
/var/log/imapd.log      root.loguser    640  3     *    72    Z
/var/log/all-log        root.loguser    640  7     *    72    Z

A number of daemons and other programs tend to leak sensitive information
(such as bad login information) to publically readable logs -- and I did
not want to give users root access to get to these files where it was
actually unnecessary.

For more general use, root.wheel would probably be sufficient.  I also
changed some of the syslog logging rules to prevent auth-style log entries
from going to the wrong places.

I suspect that there are some daemons/etc out there that are delivering
some of the auth-style log messages with the wrong level on the log
message (i.e., notice or something) and as a result, they are not getting
caught be this.  However, I have not looked closely.

I don't know if the standard FreeBSD ssh port/package changes the log
level from DAEMON to AUTH or not, but I certainly had to do that on my own
build of sshd (see /etc/sshd_config).

On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Jan B. Koum  wrote:

> 
> 	Hello all,
> 
> 	Be default FreeBSD has many files in /var/log group write. What is
> the reason for that? Can we change this to be group read only?
> 	Also, would it make more sence to ship /var/log/messages o-r by
> default? Why do we want all world to know what goes into our
> /var/log/messages files?
> 	[we would also need to modify /etc/newsyslog.conf's mode column
> to 640 then]
> 
> -- Yan
> 
> Jan Koum                  jkb@best.com |  "Turn up the lights; I don't want
> www.FreeBSD.org --  The Power to Serve |   to go home in the dark."
> "Write longer sentences - they are paying us a lot of money"
> 
> 
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message
> 


  Robert N Watson 

Carnegie Mellon University            http://www.cmu.edu/
TIS Labs at Network Associates, Inc.  http://www.tis.com/
SafePort Network Services             http://www.safeport.com/
robert@fledge.watson.org              http://www.watson.org/~robert/


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