Ned Freed wrote:
But does that student have access to the root account on servers which
are part of the networking infrastructure? Who cares if Joe User
blows up his own config. on a PC that nobody else depends on but Joe?
But if nobody has local access to these servers, why is it is
necessary or
useful for servers to run with root access in order to bind to these
ports?
I think the discussion has reinforced and crystallized my personal
feeling on the subject:
- Services will have to start up listening to specific ports. Whether
the port number is specified in an RFC, an SRV record or a config file
on a dozen other hosts is in fact irrelevant to the fact that they have
to start up knowing what port to listen to (unless they have write
access to SRV).
- The "root gets to open ports < 1024" mechanism is harmful; there are
ports < 1024 that need to be opened by non-root processes, and ports >
1024 that need to be protected from "random programs".
- Conclusion 1: Hosts that care about separation of privileges need to
be able to specify access rights on ports as part of their configuration
- with "can be handed out to processes asking for a port" being one
particular kind of access right.
- Conclusion 2: There is no reason for standards to uphold the
distinction between <1024 and >1024 any more.
Harald
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