RE: virtual server - security

[jnf <jnf () datakill org>]

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> comments interspersed below...

likewise.

> What's the point of the exercise if you're passing plaintext passwords
> across on port 21?  At the very least, mandate SCP/SFTP on port 22.

yes because having a remote exploit every month or two for 
root^H^H^HSecure shell is much better than limiting it to sniffing on the 
lan, or even better than using one of the ssl type wrappers for telnet.

> use 'chroot' jails

and look into kernel patches like grsec that take some of the damn 
stupidity out of the standard chroot system call. You perhaps may want to 
look into where you might be able to use read only filesystems in your 
setup, while breaking out of a (good) chroot jail on a read only partition 
is not impossible- it could make life hell for quite a few. 
 
> "PHP" and "run safely" in the same sentence?  Have you perused Bugtraq
> lately?

have you ever noticied that a good 80-90% of those posts are cross site 
scripting holes or sql injections that are the result of shoddy 
programming (web developers bad programmers as a whole? nooo never.)
And less often language specific. As to answer the poster's question, I'm 
not sure if suexec works with php, i dont think it does, but you might 
want to look into that or see if you can find something similar.

 
> That's primarily because PHP will let you shoot yourself in the head, as
> opposed to most languages which will only let you shoot yourself in the
> foot, or at least no higher than the knee.  (snide commentary... unless it's
> a microsoft product, which seem to aim squarely for "the jewels")

yea I'd describe a stack or heap based overflow to be shooting yourself in 
the foot.

 
> Yes.  Near daily bugtraq reports about why PHP is a darned good idea that
> made a left turn into a really bad neighborhood.  The manpage for
> SCP/SFTP/SSH.  The manpage for 'chroot'.

I will agree that php could be more secure, although i must admit its come 
a hell of a long ways since its first introduction, there are plenty of 
articles over php security on google- I'm sure your local bookstore will 
have books that will at least cover the subject to some degree. Just like 
any language php will let you screw yourself- most of what you find on 
bugtraq as I said are not language problems, but programmer problems. A 
quick google search will show nearly as many exploits (if not more) for 
[open]ssh as for wuftp, yet wu is considered horribly insecure and ssh 
secure, go figure. I'd also look into chroot as suggested, I am unsure of 
whether it is avail. to php programs, it might be- and you might consider 
figuring a way to wrap all php scripts executed in chroot, although if it 
is anything like perl, chroot'ing it will be a major pain in the ass.
In short, screw bugtraq- goto google or your book store, or even php.net - 
they are all bound to have tons of information about what you are looking 
for.

just my 4 peso's.

j

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