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General software and network General OS-independent software and network questions, X11, MTA, routing, etc.

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Old 29th June 2011
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CyberJet CyberJet is offline
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Default purpose of system accounts?

Greetings to all,

Please forgive my ignorance,

What is the purpose for not wanting to start the login shell? I'm just trying to learn. Please explain.

Thank you,
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Old 29th June 2011
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Sometimes you want to run a command as a system user (like 'www' or 'nobody'), which typically does not have (or need) a login shell for security reasons.
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Old 30th June 2011
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Thank You DutchDaemon!
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Old 30th June 2011
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DutchDaemon View Post
Sometimes you want to run a command as a system user (like 'www' or 'nobody'), which typically does not have (or need) a login shell for security reasons.
Taking this one step further, many consider running applications through a system account to be more secure (by further limiting resource access...) than simply running an application as root (which can access everything...). Access separation is considered a good thing, & logging into such accounts is not necessary.
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Old 30th June 2011
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^ What he said

Consider this shell script:
Code:
rm -rf "/${root}"
Now, because of a error in your script or some other reason, ${root} isn't set. The shell will continue happily, but now it executes:
Code:
rm -rf "/"
Whoops!
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Last edited by Carpetsmoker; 30th June 2011 at 04:52 PM.
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Old 30th June 2011
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Imagine you have a small server application running. You can run it as root, some user with login shell, or some user without login shell.

Your server application gets hit with a buffer overflow attack (for example, it could get hit with any range of other attacks as well). The attack's payload is set to insert an ssh key into $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys, meaning the attacker can then ssh to the host machine without a password.

As root, the attacker just compromised the entire machine. As normal user, the attacker can login then launch priv. escalation attacks to gain root. As user w/nologin, the attacker is stuck out in the cold.

Make sense?
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Last edited by rocket357; 30th June 2011 at 03:19 PM.
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Old 30th June 2011
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Example application -- a database engine. The administrative userid is typically NOT root, but is postgresql, or mysql, or whatever. On OpenBSD, these system userids typically start with underscore, such as _postgresql. The startup scripts will use sudo or su to bring up the associated daemons, such as:
Code:
su -l _postgresql -c "nohup /usr/local/bin/pg_ctl start \
        -D /var/postgresql/data -l /var/postgresql/logfile \
        -o '-D /var/postgresql/data' >/dev/null"
(It is, of course, best practice to NEVER have your database servers exposed to the Internet. But problems can also occur from inside one's network. Is everybody trusted? Even if they are, did one of them accidentally do something that enabled a remote vector in by an external attacker?)
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Old 30th June 2011
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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Not enough explanations or examples, keep going.
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Old 30th June 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BSDfan666 View Post
Not enough explanations or examples, keep going.
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Old 1st July 2011
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Greetings to all!

Ocicat, "www" and "nobody" are system users? I thought that www was a service and nobody someone trying to break into my system.

Can you please show me an example of how you will use "www" and "nobody" to do something useful.

Thanks
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Old 1st July 2011
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CyberJet View Post
Ocicat, "www" and "nobody" are system users?
Look at the output of the following commands on OpenBSD:
Code:
$ cat /etc/passwd | grep www
www:*:67:67:HTTP Server:/var/www:/sbin/nologin
$ cat /etc/passwd | grep nobody
nobody:*32767:32767:Unpriviledged user for NFS:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin
$
As for the name of OpenBSD's default Web server, look at httpd(8).
Quote:
Can you please show me an example of how you will use "www" and "nobody" to do something useful.
  • What resources should a Web server be able to access?
  • As for NFS, you might benefit from reading the FAQ's discussion on NFS in Section 6.7.
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Old 1st July 2011
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Thank you, I'll be reading the discussion.

Regards
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