[Nut-upsdev] Re: [nut-commits] svn commit r731

[Henning Brauer]

* Peter Selinger <selinger at mathstat.dal.ca> [2007-01-23 17:47]:
> Henning Brauer wrote:
> > 
> > * Arjen de Korte <nut+devel at de-korte.org> [2007-01-23 12:58]:
> > > 
> > > >> The listen_add() function doesn't need root access, so this shouldn't be
> > > >> a problem. Provided the listening socket is above 1023, setuptcp()
> > > >> doesn't need root access either.
> > > >
> > > > of course
> > > >
> > > >> However I don't want to limit ourselves here
> > > >> (there may be people wanting to setup a low port), so I want to setup
> > > >> the server listening sockets as root at least at startup of upsd.
> > > >
> > > > that is a really bad idea.
> > > 
> > > Maybe it is, but it is what we have been doing for years. I don't want to
> > > change this without fully understanding (and documenting) the changes and
> > > the impact this may have on system administrators.
> > 
> > well, let me make it more clear: it is outright dangerous.
> 
> Please elaborate? There are lots of suid programs that open a socket
> and then drop root privileges immediately. For example, ping(8) does
> this, as does ping6(8).

they do not have other options - raw sockets are root only.

-- 
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