>>>>> "Greg" == Greg A Woods <woods@most.weird.com> writes:

On Tuesday, March 16, 1999 at 23:18:10 (-0800), Jason Thorpe wrote:
>> Subject: Re: CVS commit: src
>> 
>> On Tue, 16 Mar 1999 18:09:44 -0800 Jonathan Stone
>> <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>> 
>> > After Perry's request, I think the most sensible thing is to put
>> > toor back, and add the "grep -v ^toor:" fix to the security
>> > script.
>> 
>> That's absolutely silly, hacking the security script for toor.

Greg> I'll say, and I'll even go further than that: it's a blatant
Greg> compromise of the security checks to make an exception for
Greg> "toor".

Yep.  But there seems to be a demand for making the exception for
toor.  I've also heard people say that they should be able to make
exceptions for other UID-0 users.

Maybe, if we decide that the exception needs to be there, it should be
in the form of a DUP_UID_EXCEPTIONS="toor" variable in
/etc/security.conf.  Or something similarly configurable.  That way,
if we ship a system without toor, that variable is set to an empty
list -- if somebody adds a toor to my system, I get warned about it.
But the people who have 5 different UID-0 accounts can add all of them
to the list of exceptions, and they won't get the "little boy who
cried wolf" symptoms.

/etc/security.conf is already in /etc/changelist, so there's a certain
(small) measure of safety from somebody breaking in, adding toor to
passwd, and adding it to the list of exceptions.

Chris

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------cjones@math.montana.edu
Chris Jones                                          cjones@honors.montana.edu
           Mad scientist at large                    cjones@nervana.montana.edu
"Is this going to be a stand-up programming session, sir, or another bug hunt?"