Su & Security

Season Greetings

Is it a security risk when connected/ing to the Internet if

a) a terminal is open under su

b) an application like gtkdial must be opened as su to connect

c) an application like kppp needs the root password to be accessible

Regards and thank you to all those who did so patiently answer questions throughout the year. Happy Holydays!

Peter

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I don't quite understand your questions, Peter. "su" is an application used to change userid, usually (but not always) from an ordinary userid to superuser. So I have to guess a bit in responding, below, about what you are actually asking.

Do you just mean that a console (or xterm or eterm) is open by the root userid? It would be unusual for this by itself to be a security risk.

Dialers normally need to run suid to access the modem device. (There are alternatives to this, though -- on my systems, all /dev/ttyS* devices are in group "dialout" and mode 660, so a dialer app need not be suid.) Unless the app itself has a security problem (and while gtkdial itself is probably pretty much secure, I have no idea what apps you might think are "like" gtkdial), this should be no problem.

I can't figure out what you mean by "accessible" here (or, once again, what apps "like" covers), so I can't really answer this one. The natural risk to think of is that you might, for some reason, store the root password in a plaintext file somewhere on the system ... but I can't imagine your not seeing the security in risk in doing that without help from this list.

--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA [email protected]
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Thanks Ray!

You guessed mostly right what I tried to ask.

to a) a terminal is open under su

When I need to be su I open an xterm with a blue color background and exit it when I connect to the Internet. Now according to you I can leave it open.

to b) an application like gtkdial must be opened as su to connect

The "like" should better be "as" and your ansewer takes away by concern.

to c) an application like kppp needs the root password to be accessible

Again "accessible" should better read "open". I take it that your answer to b) will apply as well to c)

Regards

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Thanks Ray!

You guessed mostly right what I tried to ask.

to a) a terminal is open under su

When I need to be su I open an xterm with a blue color background, so I know it's su, and exit it when I connect to the Internet. Now according to you I can leave it open.

to b) an application like gtkdial must be opened as su to connect

The "like" should better be "as" and your answer takes away by concern.

to c) an application like kppp needs the root password to be accessible

Again "accessible" should better read "open". I take it that your answer to b) will apply as well to c)

Regards

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