Re: Bind to privileged (<1024) ports

David Ford (david@kalifornia.com)
Mon, 8 Jun 1998 14:21:14 -0700 (PDT)

On Mon, 8 Jun 1998, Winfried Truemper wrote:
[snipped]
> This would require only be a few extra bytes added to kernel code and
> data, but would limit the impact of security holes in daemons running
> (traditionally) as root. Think of the recent bind vulnerability.

i'm sure this would be a nice feature but it would make programmers even
more security lax. bind has the capacity to run as a non-privileged user
as do most daemons.

if it doesn't need to run as root, put it >1023. otherwise, either bind
and drop permissions or maintain a vigilant security stance.

allowing non-priveleged uids to bind in this region opens a plethura of
potential problems. an admin who is lax in this and sets up his machine
this way likely hasn't determined that all programs that are suid to this
uid are secured.

we could go on and on about this, but this is really a copout for bad
programming in the first place and really should be dealt with in
userland.

-d

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