Subject: Re: [netatalk-admins] Re: Feature Suggestion: AFP/TCP running as user, not root
From: Bill Studenmund (skippy@macro.stanford.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 14 1997 - 19:17:59 EST
On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Aaron Gowatch wrote:
[user-started afpd's]
> As a Sysadmin, security is an obvious concern. I'm glad that no one is
> trying to do this on one of our machines.
What is the concern? The afpd in question can not do anything the user
can't do. In some ways, it can do less than a user at a command line (afpd
AFAIK can't call arbitrary shell commands, so it can't get at buffer
overruns).
All such an afpd could do is what an ftp process run as the user could do.
It could fill up partitions (either to quota or free space limits) which
are writable by the user, or show files which are readable by the user.
If the user would be ftp'ing in to get and store these files, I don't see
how this is _less_ secure than ftp. Unless of course you have a kerberized
ftp and compare it against plain-text password authentication on afpd.
Take care,
Bill
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