From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 24 5:29:33 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from gw.nectar.cc (gw.nectar.cc [208.42.49.153]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BAC0337B41A; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 05:29:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from madman.nectar.cc (madman.nectar.cc [10.0.1.111]) by gw.nectar.cc (Postfix) with ESMTP id 16766F; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:27:59 -0500 (CDT) Received: from madman.nectar.cc (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by madman.nectar.cc (8.12.3/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g3OCRwFM043146; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:27:58 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from nectar@madman.nectar.cc) Received: (from nectar@localhost) by madman.nectar.cc (8.12.3/8.12.3/Submit) id g3OCRtRS043145; Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:27:55 -0500 (CDT) Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 07:27:55 -0500 From: "Jacques A. Vidrine" To: "Greg 'groggy' Lehey" Cc: Robert Watson , Jordan Hubbard , Oscar Bonilla , Anthony Schneider , Mike Meyer , hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Security through obscurity? (was: ssh + compiled-in SKEY support considered harmful?) Message-ID: <20020424122754.GC42969@madman.nectar.cc> References: <20020423131646.I6425@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20020424090655.O6425@wantadilla.lemis.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20020424090655.O6425@wantadilla.lemis.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.28i X-Url: http://www.nectar.cc/ 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 On Wed, Apr 24, 2002 at 09:06:55AM +0930, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: > I think the issue here is that individuals make this kind of decision. > We need a broader consensus for this kind of change. As Jochem points > out, only 3 people were involved in the decision, all of them people > with security profiles which weren't affected by this change. What, he should have gotten 30 reviewers? I think what is happening here is exactly what should happen: it seems like a good idea to one guy; he implements it. He shows it to a few more folks; they think it is a good idea, too. It gets committed, and the majority of people either don't notice it or believe it is a good feature. But the majority doesn't rule. The feature sits in the tree and maybe people run into problems with it. If so, it gets fine tuned or backed out. I think this is what is supposed to happen. For my part, I would like to see the change backed out and rethought. I like having the X server not doing TCP by default, but this change loses because: = It breaks existing configurations with no warning. = The option is in the wrong place (startx) and there is apparently no way to override the default. I think it would be better to just put `-nolisten tcp' in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xinit/xserverrc for new installations only. Then the system administrator could easily override it for all users; and at least a user can override it for herself. Disclosure: I'm unhappy that after upgrading my laptop yesterday, I found I couldn't run `x2x', and had to restart my X session to remedy the problem. All my X traffic uses IPsec --- there's no need to bring up SSH. Cheers, -- Jacques A. Vidrine http://www.nectar.cc/ NTT/Verio SME . FreeBSD UNIX . Heimdal Kerberos jvidrine@verio.net . nectar@FreeBSD.org . nectar@kth.se To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message