1.\" Copyright (c) 1998 Matthew Dillon. Terms and conditions are those of 2.\" the BSD Copyright as specified in the file "/usr/src/COPYRIGHT" in 3.\" the source tree. 4.\" 5.\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man7/security.7,v 1.13.2.11 2002/04/13 02:04:44 keramida Exp $ 6.\" 7.Dd September 18, 1999 8.Dt SECURITY 7 9.Os 10.Sh NAME 11.Nm security 12.Nd introduction to security under DragonFly 13.Sh DESCRIPTION 14Security is a function that begins and ends with the system administrator. 15While all 16.Bx 17multi-user systems have some inherent security, the job of building and 18maintaining additional security mechanisms to keep users 19.Sq honest 20is probably 21one of the single largest undertakings of the sysadmin. Machines are 22only as secure as you make them, and security concerns are ever competing 23with the human necessity for convenience. 24.Ux 25systems, 26in general, are capable of running a huge number of simultaneous processes 27and many of these processes operate as servers - meaning that external entities 28can connect and talk to them. As yesterday's mini-computers and mainframes 29become today's desktops, and as computers become networked and internetworked, 30security becomes an ever bigger issue. 31.Pp 32Security is best implemented through a layered onion approach. In a nutshell, 33what you want to do is to create as many layers of security as are convenient 34and then carefully monitor the system for intrusions. You do not want to 35overbuild your security or you will interfere with the detection side, and 36detection is one of the single most important aspects of any security 37mechanism. For example, it makes little sense to set the 38.Pa schg 39flags 40(see 41.Xr chflags 1 ) 42on every system binary because while this may temporarily protect the 43binaries, it prevents a hacker who has broken in from making an 44easily detectable change that may result in your security mechanisms not 45detecting the hacker at all. 46.Pp 47System security also pertains to dealing with various forms of attack, 48including attacks that attempt to crash or otherwise make a system unusable 49but do not attempt to break root. Security concerns can be split up into 50several categories: 51.Bl -enum -offset indent 52.It 53Denial of service attacks 54.It 55User account compromises 56.It 57Root compromise through accessible servers 58.It 59Root compromise via user accounts 60.It 61Backdoor creation 62.El 63.Pp 64A denial of service attack is an action that deprives the machine of needed 65resources. Typically, D.O.S. attacks are brute-force mechanisms that attempt 66to crash or otherwise make a machine unusable by overwhelming its servers or 67network stack. Some D.O.S. attacks try to take advantages of bugs in the 68networking stack to crash a machine with a single packet. The latter can 69only be fixed by applying a bug fix to the kernel. Attacks on servers can 70often be fixed by properly specifying options to limit the load the servers 71incur on the system under adverse conditions. Brute-force network 72attacks are harder to deal with. A spoofed-packet attack, for example, is 73nearly impossible to stop short of cutting your system off from the Internet. 74It may not be able to take your machine down, but it can fill up Internet 75pipe. 76.Pp 77A user account compromise is even more common than a D.O.S. attack. Many 78sysadmins still run standard telnetd, rlogind, rshd, and ftpd servers on their 79machines. These servers, by default, do not operate over encrypted 80connections. The result is that if you have any moderate-sized user base, 81one or more of your users logging into your system from a remote location 82(which is the most common and convenient way to login to a system) 83will 84have his or her password sniffed. The attentive system admin will analyze 85his remote access logs looking for suspicious source addresses 86even for successful logins. 87.Pp 88One must always assume that once an attacker has access to a user account, 89the attacker can break root. However, the reality is that in a well secured 90and maintained system, access to a user account does not necessarily give the 91attacker access to root. The distinction is important because without access 92to root the attacker cannot generally hide his tracks and may, at best, be 93able to do nothing more than mess with the user's files or crash the machine. 94User account compromises are very common because users tend not to take the 95precautions that sysadmins take. 96.Pp 97System administrators must keep in mind that there are potentially many ways 98to break root on a machine. The attacker may know the root password, 99the attacker 100may find a bug in a root-run server and be able to break root over a network 101connection to that server, or the attacker may know of a bug in an suid-root 102program that allows the attacker to break root once he has broken into a 103user's account. If an attacker has found a way to break root on a machine, 104the attacker may not have a need to install a backdoor. 105Many of the root holes found and closed to date involve a considerable amount 106of work by the hacker to cleanup after himself, so most hackers do install 107backdoors. This gives you a convenient way to detect the hacker. Making 108it impossible for a hacker to install a backdoor may actually be detrimental 109to your security because it will not close off the hole the hacker found to 110break in the first place. 111.Pp 112Security remedies should always be implemented with a multi-layered 113.Sq onion peel 114approach and can be categorized as follows: 115.Bl -enum -offset indent 116.It 117Securing root and staff accounts 118.It 119Securing root - root-run servers and suid/sgid binaries 120.It 121Securing user accounts 122.It 123Securing the password file 124.It 125Securing the kernel core, raw devices, and filesystems 126.It 127Quick detection of inappropriate changes made to the system 128.It 129Paranoia 130.El 131.Sh SECURING THE ROOT ACCOUNT AND SECURING STAFF ACCOUNTS 132Don't bother securing staff accounts if you haven't secured the root 133account. Most systems have a password assigned to the root account. The 134first thing you do is assume that the password is 135.Sq always 136compromised. This does not mean that you should remove the password. The 137password is almost always necessary for console access to the machine. 138What it does mean is that you should not make it possible to use the password 139outside of the console or possibly even with a 140.Xr su 1 141command. 142For example, make sure that your pty's are specified as being unsecure 143in the 144.Sq Pa /etc/ttys 145file 146so that direct root logins via telnet or rlogin are disallowed. If using 147other login services such as sshd, make sure that direct root logins are 148disabled there as well. Consider every access method - services such as 149ftp often fall through the cracks. Direct root logins should only be allowed 150via the system console. 151.Pp 152Of course, as a sysadmin you have to be able to get to root, so we open up 153a few holes. But we make sure these holes require additional password 154verification to operate. One way to make root accessible is to add appropriate 155staff accounts to the wheel group 156(in 157.Pa /etc/group ) . 158The staff members placed 159in the wheel group are allowed to 160.Sq su 161to root. You should never give staff 162members native wheel access by putting them in the wheel group in their 163password entry. Staff accounts should be placed in a 164.Sq staff 165group, and then added to the wheel group via the 166.Sq Pa /etc/group 167file. Only those staff members who actually need to have root access 168should be placed in the wheel group. It is also possible, when using an 169authentication method such as kerberos, to use kerberos's 170.Sq Pa .k5login 171file in the root account to allow a 172.Xr ksu 1 173to root without having to place anyone at all in the wheel group. This 174may be the better solution since the wheel mechanism still allows an 175intruder to break root if the intruder has gotten hold of your password 176file and can break into a staff account. While having the wheel mechanism 177is better than having nothing at all, it isn't necessarily the safest 178option. 179.Pp 180An indirect way to secure the root account is to secure your staff accounts 181by using an alternative login access method and *'ing out the crypted password 182for the staff accounts. This way an intruder may be able to steal the password 183file but will not be able to break into any staff accounts (or, indirectly, 184root, even if root has a crypted password associated with it). Staff members 185get into their staff accounts through a secure login mechanism such as 186.Xr kerberos 8 187or 188.Xr ssh 1 189using a private/public 190key pair. When you use something like kerberos you generally must secure 191the machines which run the kerberos servers and your desktop workstation. 192When you use a public/private key pair with ssh, you must generally secure 193the machine you are logging in FROM 194(typically your workstation), 195but you can 196also add an additional layer of protection to the key pair by password 197protecting the keypair when you create it with 198.Xr ssh-keygen 1 . 199Being able 200to *-out the passwords for staff accounts also guarantees that staff members 201can only login through secure access methods that you have setup. You can 202thus force all staff members to use secure, encrypted connections for 203all their sessions which closes an important hole used by many intruders: That 204of sniffing the network from an unrelated, less secure machine. 205.Pp 206The more indirect security mechanisms also assume that you are logging in 207from a more restrictive server to a less restrictive server. For example, 208if your main box is running all sorts of servers, your workstation shouldn't 209be running any. In order for your workstation to be reasonably secure 210you should run as few servers as possible, up to and including no servers 211at all, and you should run a password-protected screen blanker. 212Of course, given physical access to 213a workstation an attacker can break any sort of security you put on it. 214This is definitely a problem that you should consider but you should also 215consider the fact that the vast majority of break-ins occur remotely, over 216a network, from people who do not have physical access to your workstation or 217servers. 218.Pp 219Using something like kerberos also gives you the ability to disable or 220change the password for a staff account in one place and have it immediately 221affect all the machines the staff member may have an account on. If a staff 222member's account gets compromised, the ability to instantly change his 223password on all machines should not be underrated. With discrete passwords, 224changing a password on N machines can be a mess. You can also impose 225re-passwording restrictions with kerberos: not only can a kerberos ticket 226be made to timeout after a while, but the kerberos system can require that 227the user choose a new password after a certain period of time 228(say, once a month). 229.Sh SECURING ROOT - ROOT-RUN SERVERS AND SUID/SGID BINARIES 230The prudent sysadmin only runs the servers he needs to, no more, no less. Be 231aware that third party servers are often the most bug-prone. For example, 232running an old version of imapd or popper is like giving a universal root 233ticket out to the entire world. Never run a server that you have not checked 234out carefully. Many servers do not need to be run as root. For example, 235the ntalk, comsat, and finger daemons can be run in special user 236.Sq sandboxes . 237A sandbox isn't perfect unless you go to a large amount of trouble, but the 238onion approach to security still stands: If someone is able to break in 239through a server running in a sandbox, they still have to break out of the 240sandbox. The more layers the attacker must break through, the lower the 241likelihood of his success. Root holes have historically been found in 242virtually every server ever run as root, including basic system servers. 243If you are running a machine through which people only login via sshd and 244never login via telnetd or rshd or rlogind, then turn off those services! 245.Pp 246.Dx 247now defaults to running ntalkd, comsat, and finger in a sandbox. 248Another program which may be a candidate for running in a sandbox is 249.Xr named 8 . 250The default rc.conf includes the arguments necessary to run 251named in a sandbox in a commented-out form. Depending on whether you 252are installing a new system or upgrading an existing system, the special 253user accounts used by these sandboxes may not be installed. The prudent 254sysadmin would research and implement sandboxes for servers whenever possible. 255.Pp 256There are a number of other servers that typically do not run in sandboxes: 257sendmail, popper, imapd, ftpd, and others. There are alternatives to 258some of these, but installing them may require more work than you are willing 259to put 260(the convenience factor strikes again). 261You may have to run these 262servers as root and rely on other mechanisms to detect break-ins that might 263occur through them. 264.Pp 265The other big potential root hole in a system are the suid-root and sgid 266binaries installed on the system. Most of these binaries, such as rlogin, 267reside in 268.Pa /bin , 269.Pa /sbin , 270.Pa /usr/bin , 271or 272.Pa /usr/sbin . 273While nothing is 100% safe, 274the system-default suid and sgid binaries can be considered reasonably safe. 275Still, root holes are occasionally found in these binaries. A root hole 276was found in Xlib in 1998 that made xterm 277(which is typically suid) 278vulnerable. 279It is better to be safe than sorry and the prudent sysadmin will restrict suid 280binaries that only staff should run to a special group that only staff can 281access, and get rid of 282.Pq Li "chmod 000" 283any suid binaries that nobody uses. A 284server with no display generally does not need an xterm binary. Sgid binaries 285can be almost as dangerous. If an intruder can break an sgid-kmem binary the 286intruder might be able to read 287.Pa /dev/kmem 288and thus read the crypted password 289file, potentially compromising any passworded account. Alternatively an 290intruder who breaks group kmem can monitor keystrokes sent through pty's, 291including pty's used by users who login through secure methods. An intruder 292that breaks the tty group can write to almost any user's tty. If a user 293is running a terminal 294program or emulator with a keyboard-simulation feature, the intruder can 295potentially 296generate a data stream that causes the user's terminal to echo a command, which 297is then run as that user. 298.Sh SECURING USER ACCOUNTS 299User accounts are usually the most difficult to secure. While you can impose 300Draconian access restrictions on your staff and *-out their passwords, you 301may not be able to do so with any general user accounts you might have. If 302you do have sufficient control then you may win out and be able to secure the 303user accounts properly. If not, you simply have to be more vigilant in your 304monitoring of those accounts. Use of ssh and kerberos for user accounts is 305more problematic due to the extra administration and technical support 306required, but still a very good solution compared to a crypted password 307file. 308.Sh SECURING THE PASSWORD FILE 309The only sure-fire way is to *-out as many passwords as you can and 310use ssh or kerberos for access to those accounts. Even though the 311crypted password file 312.Pq Pa /etc/spwd.db 313can only be read by root, it may 314be possible for an intruder to obtain read access to that file even if the 315attacker cannot obtain root-write access. 316.Pp 317Your security scripts should always check for and report changes to 318the password file 319(see 320.Sq Checking file integrity 321below). 322.Sh SECURING THE KERNEL CORE, RAW DEVICES, AND FILESYSTEMS 323If an attacker breaks root he can do just about anything, but there 324are certain conveniences. For example, most modern kernels have a 325packet sniffing device driver built in. Under 326.Dx 327it is called 328the 329.Sq bpf 330device. An intruder will commonly attempt to run a packet sniffer 331on a compromised machine. You do not need to give the intruder the 332capability and most systems should not have the bpf device compiled in. 333.Pp 334But even if you turn off the bpf device, 335you still have 336.Pa /dev/mem 337and 338.Pa /dev/kmem 339to worry about. For that matter, 340the intruder can still write to raw disk devices. 341Also, there is another kernel feature called the module loader, 342.Xr kldload 8 . 343An enterprising intruder can use a KLD module to install 344his own bpf device or other sniffing device on a running kernel. 345To avoid these problems you have to run 346the kernel at a higher secure level, at least securelevel 1. The securelevel 347can be set with a sysctl on the 348.Va kern.securelevel 349variable. Once you have 350set the securelevel to 1, write access to raw devices will be denied and 351special chflags flags, such as 352.Sq schg , 353will be enforced. You must also ensure 354that the 355.Sq schg 356flag is set on critical startup binaries, directories, and 357script files - everything that gets run up to the point where the securelevel 358is set. This might be overdoing it, and upgrading the system is much more 359difficult when you operate at a higher secure level. You may compromise and 360run the system at a higher secure level but not set the schg flag for every 361system file and directory under the sun. Another possibility is to simply 362mount / and /usr read-only. It should be noted that being too draconian in 363what you attempt to protect may prevent the all-important detection of an 364intrusion. 365.Sh CHECKING FILE INTEGRITY: BINARIES, CONFIG FILES, ETC 366When it comes right down to it, you can only protect your core system 367configuration and control files so much before the convenience factor 368rears its ugly head. For example, using chflags to set the schg bit 369on most of the files in / and /usr is probably counterproductive because 370while it may protect the files, it also closes a detection window. The 371last layer of your security onion is perhaps the most important - detection. 372The rest of your security is pretty much useless (or, worse, presents you with 373a false sense of safety) if you cannot detect potential incursions. Half 374the job of the onion is to slow down the attacker rather than stop him 375in order to give the detection side of the equation a chance to catch him in 376the act. 377.Pp 378The best way to detect an incursion is to look for modified, missing, or 379unexpected files. The best 380way to look for modified files is from another (often centralized) 381limited-access system. 382Writing your security scripts on the extra-secure limited-access system 383makes them mostly invisible to potential hackers, and this is important. 384In order to take maximum advantage you generally have to give the 385limited-access box significant access to the other machines in the business, 386usually either by doing a read-only NFS export of the other machines to the 387limited-access box, or by setting up ssh keypairs to allow the limit-access 388box to ssh to the other machines. Except for its network traffic, NFS is 389the least visible method - allowing you to monitor the filesystems on each 390client box virtually undetected. If your 391limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a switch, 392the NFS method is often the better choice. If your limited-access server 393is connected to the client boxes through a hub or through several layers 394of routing, the NFS method may be too insecure (network-wise) and using ssh 395may be the better choice even with the audit-trail tracks that ssh lays. 396.Pp 397Once you give a limit-access box at least read access to the client systems 398it is supposed to monitor, you must write scripts to do the actual 399monitoring. Given an NFS mount, you can write scripts out of simple system 400utilities such as 401.Xr find 1 402and 403.Xr md5 1 . 404It is best to physically md5 the client-box files boxes at least once a 405day, and to test control files such as those found in 406.Pa /etc , 407.Pa /usr/local/etc 408and 409.Pa /usr/pkg/etc 410even more often. When mismatches are found relative to the base md5 411information the limited-access machine knows is valid, it should scream at 412a sysadmin to go check it out. A good security script will also check for 413inappropriate suid binaries and for new or deleted files on system partitions 414such as 415.Pa / 416and 417.Pa /usr 418.Pp 419When using ssh rather than NFS, writing the security script is much more 420difficult. You essentially have to 421.Pa scp 422the scripts to the client box in order to run them, making them visible, and 423for safety you also need to scp the binaries (such as find) that those scripts 424use. The ssh daemon on the client box may already be compromised. All in all, 425using ssh may be necessary when running over unsecure links, but it's also a 426lot harder to deal with. 427.Pp 428A good security script will also check for changes to user and staff members 429access configuration files: 430.Pa .rhosts , 431.Pa .shosts , 432.Pa .ssh/authorized_keys 433and so forth... files that might fall outside the purview of the MD5 check. 434.Pp 435If you have a huge amount of user disk space it may take too long to run 436through every file on those partitions. In this case, setting mount 437flags to disallow suid binaries and devices on those partitions is a good 438idea. The 439.Sq nodev 440and 441.Sq nosuid 442options 443(see 444.Xr mount 8 ) 445are what you want to look into. I would scan them anyway at least once a 446week, since the object of this layer is to detect a break-in whether or 447not the breakin is effective. 448.Pp 449Process accounting 450(see 451.Xr accton 8 ) 452is a relatively low-overhead feature of 453the operating system which I recommend using as a post-break-in evaluation 454mechanism. It is especially useful in tracking down how an intruder has 455actually broken into a system, assuming the file is still intact after 456the break-in occurs. 457.Pp 458Finally, security scripts should process the log files and the logs themselves 459should be generated in as secure a manner as possible - remote syslog can be 460very useful. An intruder tries to cover his tracks, and log files are critical 461to the sysadmin trying to track down the time and method of the initial 462break-in. One way to keep a permanent record of the log files is to run 463the system console to a serial port and collect the information on a 464continuing basis through a secure machine monitoring the consoles. 465.Sh PARANOIA 466A little paranoia never hurts. As a rule, a sysadmin can add any number 467of security features as long as they do not affect convenience, and 468can add security features that do affect convenience with some added 469thought. Even more importantly, a security administrator should mix it up 470a bit - if you use recommendations such as those given by this manual 471page verbatim, you give away your methodologies to the prospective 472hacker who also has access to this manual page. 473.Sh SPECIAL SECTION ON D.O.S. ATTACKS 474This section covers Denial of Service attacks. A DOS attack is typically 475a packet attack. While there isn't much you can do about modern spoofed 476packet attacks that saturate your network, you can generally limit the damage 477by ensuring that the attacks cannot take down your servers. 478.Bl -enum -offset indent 479.It 480Limiting server forks 481.It 482Limiting springboard attacks (ICMP response attacks, ping broadcast, etc...) 483.It 484Kernel Route Cache 485.El 486.Pp 487A common D.O.S. attack is against a forking server that attempts to cause the 488server to eat processes, file descriptors, and memory until the machine 489dies. Inetd 490(see 491.Xr inetd 8 ) 492has several options to limit this sort of attack. 493It should be noted that while it is possible to prevent a machine from going 494down it is not generally possible to prevent a service from being disrupted 495by the attack. Read the inetd manual page carefully and pay specific attention 496to the 497.Fl c , 498.Fl C , 499and 500.Fl R 501options. Note that spoofed-IP attacks will circumvent 502the 503.Fl C 504option to inetd, so typically a combination of options must be used. 505Some standalone servers have self-fork-limitation parameters. 506.Pp 507Sendmail has its 508.Fl OMaxDaemonChildren 509option which tends to work much 510better than trying to use sendmail's load limiting options due to the 511load lag. You should specify a 512.Cm MaxDaemonChildren 513parameter when you start 514sendmail high enough to handle your expected load but no so high that the 515computer cannot handle that number of sendmails without falling on its face. 516It is also prudent to run sendmail in queued mode 517.Pq Fl ODeliveryMode=queued 518and to run the daemon 519.Pq Cm sendmail -bd 520separate from the queue-runs 521.Pq Cm sendmail -q15m . 522If you still want realtime delivery you can run the queue 523at a much lower interval, such as 524.Fl q1m , 525but be sure to specify a reasonable 526.Cm MaxDaemonChildren 527option for that sendmail to prevent cascade failures. 528.Pp 529Syslogd can be attacked directly and it is strongly recommended that you use 530the 531.Fl s 532option whenever possible, and the 533.Fl a 534option otherwise. 535.Pp 536You should also be fairly careful 537with connect-back services such as tcpwrapper's reverse-identd, which can 538be attacked directly. You generally do not want to use the reverse-ident 539feature of tcpwrappers for this reason. 540.Pp 541It is a very good idea to protect internal services from external access 542by firewalling them off at your border routers. The idea here is to prevent 543saturation attacks from outside your LAN, not so much to protect internal 544services from network-based root compromise. Always configure an exclusive 545firewall, i.e.\& 546.So 547firewall everything *except* ports A, B, C, D, and M-Z 548.Sc . 549This 550way you can firewall off all of your low ports except for certain specific 551services such as named 552(if you are primary for a zone), 553ntalkd, sendmail, 554and other internet-accessible services. 555If you try to configure the firewall the other 556way - as an inclusive or permissive firewall, there is a good chance that you 557will forget to 558.Sq close 559a couple of services or that you will add a new internal 560service and forget to update the firewall. You can still open up the 561high-numbered port range on the firewall to allow permissive-like operation 562without compromising your low ports. Also take note that 563.Dx 564allows you to 565control the range of port numbers used for dynamic binding via the various 566net.inet.ip.portrange sysctl's 567.Pq Li "sysctl -a | fgrep portrange" , 568which can also 569ease the complexity of your firewall's configuration. I usually use a normal 570first/last range of 4000 to 5000, and a hiport range of 49152 to 65535, then 571block everything under 4000 off in my firewall 572(except for certain specific 573internet-accessible ports, of course). 574.Pp 575Another common D.O.S. attack is called a springboard attack - to attack a server 576in a manner that causes the server to generate responses which then overload 577the server, the local network, or some other machine. The most common attack 578of this nature is the ICMP PING BROADCAST attack. The attacker spoofs ping 579packets sent to your LAN's broadcast address with the source IP address set 580to the actual machine they wish to attack. If your border routers are not 581configured to stomp on ping's to broadcast addresses, your LAN winds up 582generating sufficient responses to the spoofed source address to saturate the 583victim, especially when the attacker uses the same trick on several dozen 584broadcast addresses over several dozen different networks at once. Broadcast 585attacks of over a hundred and twenty megabits have been measured. A second 586common springboard attack is against the ICMP error reporting system. By 587constructing packets that generate ICMP error responses, an attacker can 588saturate a server's incoming network and cause the server to saturate its 589outgoing network with ICMP responses. This type of attack can also crash the 590server by running it out of mbuf's, especially if the server cannot drain the 591ICMP responses it generates fast enough. The 592.Dx 593kernel has a new kernel 594compile option called ICMP_BANDLIM which limits the effectiveness of these 595sorts of attacks. The last major class of springboard attacks is related to 596certain internal inetd services such as the udp echo service. An attacker 597simply spoofs a UDP packet with the source address being server A's echo port, 598and the destination address being server B's echo port, where server A and B 599are both on your LAN. The two servers then bounce this one packet back and 600forth between each other. The attacker can overload both servers and their 601LANs simply by injecting a few packets in this manner. Similar problems 602exist with the internal chargen port. A competent sysadmin will turn off all 603of these inetd-internal test services. 604.Pp 605Spoofed packet attacks may also be used to overload the kernel route cache. 606Refer to the 607.Va net.inet.ip.rtexpire , 608.Va net.inet.ip.rtminexpire , 609and 610.Va net.inet.ip.rtmaxcache 611sysctl 612parameters. A spoofed packet attack that uses a random source IP will cause 613the kernel to generate a temporary cached route in the route table, viewable 614with 615.Sq netstat -rna \&| fgrep W3 . 616These routes typically timeout in 1600 617seconds or so. If the kernel detects that the cached route table has gotten 618too big it will dynamically reduce the rtexpire but will never decrease it to 619less than rtminexpire. There are two problems: (1) The kernel does not react 620quickly enough when a lightly loaded server is suddenly attacked, and (2) The 621rtminexpire is not low enough for the kernel to survive a sustained attack. 622If your servers are connected to the internet via a T3 or better it may be 623prudent to manually override both rtexpire and rtminexpire via 624.Xr sysctl 8 . 625Never set either parameter to zero 626(unless you want to crash the machine :-)). 627Setting both parameters to 2 seconds should be sufficient to protect the route 628table from attack. 629.Sh ACCESS ISSUES WITH KERBEROS AND SSH 630There are a few issues with both kerberos and ssh that need to be addressed 631if you intend to use them. Kerberos V is an excellent authentication 632protocol but the kerberized telnet and rlogin suck rocks. There are bugs that 633make them unsuitable for dealing with binary streams. Also, by default 634kerberos does not encrypt a session unless you use the 635.Fl x 636option. Ssh encrypts everything by default. 637.Pp 638Ssh works quite well in every respect except when it is set up to 639forward encryption keys. 640What this means is that if you have a secure workstation holding 641keys that give you access to the rest of the system, and you ssh to an 642unsecure machine, your keys becomes exposed. The actual keys themselves are 643not exposed, but ssh installs a forwarding port for the duration of your 644login and if a hacker has broken root on the unsecure machine he can utilize 645that port to use your keys to gain access to any other machine that your 646keys unlock. 647.Pp 648We recommend that you use ssh in combination with kerberos whenever possible 649for staff logins. Ssh can be compiled with kerberos support. This reduces 650your reliance on potentially exposable ssh keys while at the same time 651protecting passwords via kerberos. Ssh keys 652should only be used for automated tasks from secure machines (something 653that kerberos is unsuited to). We also recommend that you either turn off 654key-forwarding in the ssh configuration, or that you make use of the 655.Pa "from=IP/DOMAIN" 656option that ssh allows in its 657.Pa authorized_keys 658file to make the key only usable to entities logging in from specific 659machines. 660.Sh SEE ALSO 661.Xr chflags 1 , 662.Xr find 1 , 663.Xr md5 1 , 664.Xr netstat 1 , 665.Xr openssl 1 , 666.Xr ssh 1 , 667.Xr xdm 1 Pq Pa x11/xdm , 668.Xr group 5 , 669.Xr ttys 5 , 670.Xr firewall 7 , 671.Xr accton 8 , 672.Xr init 8 , 673.Xr kerberos 8 , 674.Xr sshd 8 , 675.Xr sysctl 8 , 676.Xr syslogd 8 , 677.Xr vipw 8 678.Sh HISTORY 679The 680.Nm 681manual page was originally written by 682.An Matthew Dillon 683and first appeared 684in 685.Fx 3.1 , 686December 1998. 687