Syslog-NG security user permissions.
With the recent brewhaha about SSH I can't help but wonder about other daemons running on my boxes that don't have privelage separation. Is it possible to give Syslog-ng a command line option (like named or ntpd)? So that after Syslog-ng binds to the network socket (with root privs) then it sets it's UID to something other than root? I realize that many of the options in syslog-ng might be more complex if this were done. I can think of many permissions and output file name and directory macros whose code would have to be modified if syslog-ng were to properly run as a regular user instead of ROOT and be able to properly handle error messages and such for permissions and directories and everything. However, it is inevitable with the facts that Syslog-NG is a network Daemon, that receives input and has macros based on that input to write to files, that a remote vulnerability in Syslog-NG will become known.... If Syslog-NG is running as a non-root UID then this is not a problem, (other than a big nuisance). -Ben.
On Thu, Jun 27, 2002 at 09:00:14AM -0400, Russo, Ben wrote:
With the recent brewhaha about SSH I can't help but wonder about other daemons running on my boxes that don't have privelage separation.
Is it possible to give Syslog-ng a command line option (like named or ntpd)? So that after Syslog-ng binds to the network socket (with root privs) then it sets it's UID to something other than root?
I realize that many of the options in syslog-ng might be more complex if this were done. I can think of many permissions and output file name and directory macros whose code would have to be modified if syslog-ng were to properly run as a regular user instead of ROOT and be able to properly handle error messages and such for permissions and directories and everything.
However, it is inevitable with the facts that Syslog-NG is a network Daemon, that receives input and has macros based on that input to write to files, that a remote vulnerability in Syslog-NG will become known.... If Syslog-NG is running as a non-root UID then this is not a problem, (other than a big nuisance).
See the -u, -g and -C options (user, group, chroot respectively). You might not be able to reload your config though. (only restart would be possible) -- Bazsi PGP info: KeyID 9AF8D0A9 Fingerprint CD27 CFB0 802C 0944 9CFD 804E C82C 8EB1
participants (2)
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Balazs Scheidler
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Russo, Ben