Re: Small Bug
On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 07:02:33AM -0500, Guy's Account wrote:
> >
> > We have some information (in this case, user names), that the security
> > model considers as "public knowledge". This means that the security
>
> This is wrong.
>
> The "model" is that an external user does NOT have access to the full
> list of user names.
No. This is not the usual Unix secuity model. If you have users with shell
account, /etc/passwd is a file readable by the public. This file contains
the user names.
What you suggest is a mail server without shell access. Only in this
restricted case you can make the point that user names should not be leaked.
But this is a very special setup, which is far beyond the purpose of a
general software distribution like Debian is.
If you have so special needs, you are welcome to make any further
customization on the machines which require it. I suggest that you close all
ports except 25. If nobody can get to a login shell, there is no problem
with the Hurd login program.
> All non-user accounts are locked and accessible only via 'sudo'.
You must not have user accounts if you are paranoid.
> Therefore it is a quadratic problem to attack the machine externally.
> Except for a small subset of the user names you are forced to guess
> username + password pairs.
Do you force people to use scrambled user names like "sdj1A.f"?
Your security system is very flawed if it allows user accounts and
depends on security of user names.
Thanks,
Marcus
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