Re: PcwRunAs Password Obfuscation Design Flaw

[Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:34:56 -0400, Jeffrey Walton said:
> Under Linux, about the best you can do to avoid hard coded passwords
> in source files is store the password in a file, and then clamp the
> ACL on the file so only tomcat, apache, or whomever can read.
> Generally, it means you remove world and group.

Or clamp down even further using SELinux, which can get you to the
point of "only /usr/bin/httpd can read this file".  Combine this with
"only the init process can launch httpd", and it gets pretty hard for
an attacker to get at the passwords without a complete system
compromise.

(Yes, it's still vulnerable to "exploit allows running arbitrary code
in the httpd process's context" and similar. I *said* "pretty hard",
not "impossible" ;)

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