On Sun, 3 Nov 96 19:41:12 -0500 (EST), woods@kuma.web.net (Greg A. Woods)  
mumbled:
> Saying that such and such feature is allows someone to trip over an
> as-yet un-introduced potential security weakness isn't saying much at
> all.  I think it would be much more productive to develop a validated
> security profile such that a feature like this can be added without fear
> of the unknown.

1. It would help if you could be less ambiguous.
2. Part of a working and effective security policy is security planning, and
   that includes observing changes very closely and with scrutiny.  RTFM.

> After all, if you think about the risk/benefit ratio, I think it should
> be obvious that there are far more risky things in the system that need
> more direct attention than a feature such as this which in a properly
> controlled environment should add nothing but benefit.

IMHO, that argumentation is extremely weak.  Just because you know that  
there's a bigger hole somewhere means that you don't care about the little  
ones anymore?!

> This is in fact a feature I would find mandatory if I were to build a
> system that provded general purpose shell access, esp. in a commercial
> unix environment.

In a commercial environment you should be able to find a better solution  
than this kludge.  And it is nothing more than that at this point: a  
kludge.
So far, no one has been able to demonstrate the absolute neccessity for  
this additional feature/junk in /bin/login.

Chris

--
Christian Kuhtz <kuhtz@ix.netcom.com>, office: ckuhtz@paranet.com
Network/UNIX Specialist for Paranet, Inc. http://www.paranet.com/
Supercomputing Junkie, et al               MIME/NeXTmail accepted

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