xref: /dragonfly/share/man/man7/security.7 (revision 49781055)
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8.Dd September 18, 1999
9.Dt SECURITY 7
10.Os
11.Sh NAME
12.Nm security
13.Nd introduction to security under
14.Dx
15.Sh DESCRIPTION
16Security is a function that begins and ends with the system administrator.
17While all
18.Bx
19multi-user systems have some inherent security, the job of building and
20maintaining additional security mechanisms to keep users
21.Sq honest
22is probably
23one of the single largest undertakings of the sysadmin.  Machines are
24only as secure as you make them, and security concerns are ever competing
25with the human necessity for convenience.
26.Ux
27systems,
28in general, are capable of running a huge number of simultaneous processes
29and many of these processes operate as servers - meaning that external entities
30can connect and talk to them.  As yesterday's mini-computers and mainframes
31become today's desktops, and as computers become networked and internetworked,
32security becomes an ever bigger issue.
33.Pp
34Security is best implemented through a layered onion approach.  In a nutshell,
35what you want to do is to create as many layers of security as are convenient
36and then carefully monitor the system for intrusions.  You do not want to
37overbuild your security or you will interfere with the detection side, and
38detection is one of the single most important aspects of any security
39mechanism.  For example, it makes little sense to set the
40.Pa schg
41flags
42(see
43.Xr chflags 1 )
44on every system binary because while this may temporarily protect the
45binaries, it prevents a hacker who has broken in from making an
46easily detectable change that may result in your security mechanisms not
47detecting the hacker at all.
48.Pp
49System security also pertains to dealing with various forms of attack,
50including attacks that attempt to crash or otherwise make a system unusable
51but do not attempt to break root.  Security concerns can be split up into
52several categories:
53.Bl -enum -offset indent
54.It
55Denial of service attacks
56.It
57User account compromises
58.It
59Root compromise through accessible servers
60.It
61Root compromise via user accounts
62.It
63Backdoor creation
64.El
65.Pp
66A denial of service attack is an action that deprives the machine of needed
67resources.  Typically, D.O.S. attacks are brute-force mechanisms that attempt
68to crash or otherwise make a machine unusable by overwhelming its servers or
69network stack.  Some D.O.S. attacks try to take advantages of bugs in the
70networking stack to crash a machine with a single packet.  The latter can
71only be fixed by applying a bug fix to the kernel.  Attacks on servers can
72often be fixed by properly specifying options to limit the load the servers
73incur on the system under adverse conditions.  Brute-force network
74attacks are harder to deal with.  A spoofed-packet attack, for example, is
75nearly impossible to stop short of cutting your system off from the Internet.
76It may not be able to take your machine down, but it can fill up Internet
77pipe.
78.Pp
79A user account compromise is even more common then a D.O.S. attack.  Many
80sysadmins still run standard telnetd, rlogind, rshd, and ftpd servers on their
81machines.  These servers, by default, do not operate over encrypted
82connections.  The result is that if you have any moderate-sized user base,
83one or more of your users logging into your system from a remote location
84(which is the most common and convenient way to login to a system)
85will
86have his or her password sniffed.  The attentive system admin will analyze
87his remote access logs looking for suspicious source addresses
88even for successful logins.
89.Pp
90One must always assume that once an attacker has access to a user account,
91the attacker can break root.  However, the reality is that in a well secured
92and maintained system, access to a user account does not necessarily give the
93attacker access to root.  The distinction is important because without access
94to root the attacker cannot generally hide his tracks and may, at best, be
95able to do nothing more than mess with the user's files or crash the machine.
96User account compromises are very common because users tend not to take the
97precautions that sysadmins take.
98.Pp
99System administrators must keep in mind that there are potentially many ways
100to break root on a machine.  The attacker may know the root password,
101the attacker
102may find a bug in a root-run server and be able to break root over a network
103connection to that server, or the attacker may know of a bug in an suid-root
104program that allows the attacker to break root once he has broken into a
105user's account.  If an attacker has found a way to break root on a machine,
106the attacker may not have a need to install a backdoor.
107Many of the root holes found and closed to date involve a considerable amount
108of work by the hacker to cleanup after himself, so most hackers do install
109backdoors.  This gives you a convenient way to detect the hacker.  Making
110it impossible for a hacker to install a backdoor may actually be detrimental
111to your security because it will not close off the hole the hacker found to
112break in the first place.
113.Pp
114Security remedies should always be implemented with a multi-layered
115.Sq onion peel
116approach and can be categorized as follows:
117.Bl -enum -offset indent
118.It
119Securing root and staff accounts
120.It
121Securing root - root-run servers and suid/sgid binaries
122.It
123Securing user accounts
124.It
125Securing the password file
126.It
127Securing the kernel core, raw devices, and filesystems
128.It
129Quick detection of inappropriate changes made to the system
130.It
131Paranoia
132.El
133.Sh SECURING THE ROOT ACCOUNT AND SECURING STAFF ACCOUNTS
134Don't bother securing staff accounts if you haven't secured the root
135account.  Most systems have a password assigned to the root account.  The
136first thing you do is assume that the password is
137.Sq always
138compromised.  This does not mean that you should remove the password.  The
139password is almost always necessary for console access to the machine.
140What it does mean is that you should not make it possible to use the password
141outside of the console or possibly even with a
142.Xr su 1
143command.
144For example, make sure that your pty's are specified as being unsecure
145in the
146.Sq Pa /etc/ttys
147file
148so that direct root logins via telnet or rlogin are disallowed.  If using
149other login services such as sshd, make sure that direct root logins are
150disabled there as well.  Consider every access method - services such as
151ftp often fall through the cracks.  Direct root logins should only be allowed
152via the system console.
153.Pp
154Of course, as a sysadmin you have to be able to get to root, so we open up
155a few holes.  But we make sure these holes require additional password
156verification to operate.  One way to make root accessible is to add appropriate
157staff accounts to the wheel group
158(in
159.Pa /etc/group ) .
160The staff members placed
161in the wheel group are allowed to
162.Sq su
163to root.  You should never give staff
164members native wheel access by putting them in the wheel group in their
165password entry.  Staff accounts should be placed in a
166.Sq staff
167group, and then added to the wheel group via the
168.Sq Pa /etc/group
169file.  Only those staff members who actually need to have root access
170should be placed in the wheel group.  It is also possible, when using an
171authentication method such as kerberos, to use kerberos's
172.Sq Pa .k5login
173file in the root account to allow a
174.Xr ksu 1
175to root without having to place anyone at all in the wheel group.  This
176may be the better solution since the wheel mechanism still allows an
177intruder to break root if the intruder has gotten hold of your password
178file and can break into a staff account.  While having the wheel mechanism
179is better then having nothing at all, it isn't necessarily the safest
180option.
181.Pp
182An indirect way to secure the root account is to secure your staff accounts
183by using an alternative login access method and *'ing out the crypted password
184for the staff accounts.  This way an intruder may be able to steal the password
185file but will not be able to break into any staff accounts (or, indirectly,
186root, even if root has a crypted password associated with it).  Staff members
187get into their staff accounts through a secure login mechanism such as
188.Xr kerberos 1
189or
190.Xr ssh 1
191using a private/public
192key pair.  When you use something like kerberos you generally must secure
193the machines which run the kerberos servers and your desktop workstation.
194When you use a public/private key pair with ssh, you must generally secure
195the machine you are logging in FROM
196(typically your workstation),
197but you can
198also add an additional layer of protection to the key pair by password
199protecting the keypair when you create it with
200.Xr ssh-keygen 1 .
201Being able
202to *-out the passwords for staff accounts also guarantees that staff members
203can only login through secure access methods that you have setup.  You can
204thus force all staff members to use secure, encrypted connections for
205all their sessions which closes an important hole used by many intruders:  That
206of sniffing the network from an unrelated, less secure machine.
207.Pp
208The more indirect security mechanisms also assume that you are logging in
209from a more restrictive server to a less restrictive server.  For example,
210if your main box is running all sorts of servers, your workstation shouldn't
211be running any.  In order for your workstation to be reasonably secure
212you should run as few servers as possible, up to and including no servers
213at all, and you should run a password-protected screen blanker.
214Of course, given physical access to
215a workstation an attacker can break any sort of security you put on it.
216This is definitely a problem that you should consider but you should also
217consider the fact that the vast majority of break-ins occur remotely, over
218a network, from people who do not have physical access to your workstation or
219servers.
220.Pp
221Using something like kerberos also gives you the ability to disable or
222change the password for a staff account in one place and have it immediately
223effect all the machine the staff member may have an account on.  If a staff
224member's account gets compromised, the ability to instantly change his
225password on all machines should not be underrated.  With discrete passwords,
226changing a password on N machines can be a mess.  You can also impose
227re-passwording restrictions with kerberos:  not only can a kerberos ticket
228be made to timeout after a while, but the kerberos system can require that
229the user choose a new password after a certain period of time
230(say, once a month).
231.Sh SECURING ROOT - ROOT-RUN SERVERS AND SUID/SGID BINARIES
232The prudent sysadmin only runs the servers he needs to, no more, no less.  Be
233aware that third party servers are often the most bug-prone.  For example,
234running an old version of imapd or popper is like giving a universal root
235ticket out to the entire world.  Never run a server that you have not checked
236out carefully.  Many servers do not need to be run as root.  For example,
237the ntalk, comsat, and finger daemons can be run in special user
238.Sq sandboxes .
239A sandbox isn't perfect unless you go to a large amount of trouble, but the
240onion approach to security still stands:  If someone is able to break in
241through a server running in a sandbox, they still have to break out of the
242sandbox.  The more layers the attacker must break through, the lower the
243likelihood of his success.  Root holes have historically been found in
244virtually every server ever run as root, including basic system servers.
245If you are running a machine through which people only login via sshd and
246never login via telnetd or rshd or rlogind, then turn off those services!
247.Pp
248.Dx
249now defaults to running ntalkd, comsat, and finger in a sandbox.
250Another program which may be a candidate for running in a sandbox is
251.Xr named 8 .
252The default rc.conf includes the arguments necessary to run
253named in a sandbox in a commented-out form.  Depending on whether you
254are installing a new system or upgrading an existing system, the special
255user accounts used by these sandboxes may not be installed.  The prudent
256sysadmin would research and implement sandboxes for servers whenever possible.
257.Pp
258There are a number of other servers that typically do not run in sandboxes:
259sendmail, popper, imapd, ftpd, and others.  There are alternatives to
260some of these, but installing them may require more work than you are willing
261to put
262(the convenience factor strikes again).
263You may have to run these
264servers as root and rely on other mechanisms to detect break-ins that might
265occur through them.
266.Pp
267The other big potential root hole in a system are the suid-root and sgid
268binaries installed on the system.  Most of these binaries, such as rlogin,
269reside in
270.Pa /bin ,
271.Pa /sbin ,
272.Pa /usr/bin ,
273or
274.Pa /usr/sbin .
275While nothing is 100% safe,
276the system-default suid and sgid binaries can be considered reasonably safe.
277Still, root holes are occasionally found in these binaries.  A root hole
278was found in Xlib in 1998 that made xterm
279(which is typically suid)
280vulnerable.
281It is better to be safe then sorry and the prudent sysadmin will restrict suid
282binaries that only staff should run to a special group that only staff can
283access, and get rid of
284.Pq Li "chmod 000"
285any suid binaries that nobody uses.  A
286server with no display generally does not need an xterm binary.  Sgid binaries
287can be almost as dangerous.  If an intruder can break an sgid-kmem binary the
288intruder might be able to read
289.Pa /dev/kmem
290and thus read the crypted password
291file, potentially compromising any passworded account.  Alternatively an
292intruder who breaks group kmem can monitor keystrokes sent through pty's,
293including pty's used by users who login through secure methods.  An intruder
294that breaks the tty group can write to almost any user's tty.  If a user
295is running a terminal
296program or emulator with a keyboard-simulation feature, the intruder can
297potentially
298generate a data stream that causes the user's terminal to echo a command, which
299is then run as that user.
300.Sh SECURING USER ACCOUNTS
301User accounts are usually the most difficult to secure.  While you can impose
302Draconian access restrictions on your staff and *-out their passwords, you
303may not be able to do so with any general user accounts you might have.  If
304you do have sufficient control then you may win out and be able to secure the
305user accounts properly.  If not, you simply have to be more vigilant in your
306monitoring of those accounts.  Use of ssh and kerberos for user accounts is
307more problematic due to the extra administration and technical support
308required, but still a very good solution compared to a crypted password
309file.
310.Sh SECURING THE PASSWORD FILE
311The only sure-fire way is to *-out as many passwords as you can and
312use ssh or kerberos for access to those accounts.  Even though the
313crypted password file
314.Pq Pa /etc/spwd.db
315can only be read by root, it may
316be possible for an intruder to obtain read access to that file even if the
317attacker cannot obtain root-write access.
318.Pp
319Your security scripts should always check for and report changes to
320the password file
321(see
322.Sq Checking file integrity
323below).
324.Sh SECURING THE KERNEL CORE, RAW DEVICES, AND FILESYSTEMS
325If an attacker breaks root he can do just about anything, but there
326are certain conveniences.  For example, most modern kernels have a
327packet sniffing device driver built in.  Under
328.Dx
329it is called
330the
331.Sq bpf
332device.  An intruder will commonly attempt to run a packet sniffer
333on a compromised machine.  You do not need to give the intruder the
334capability and most systems should not have the bpf device compiled in.
335.Pp
336But even if you turn off the bpf device,
337you still have
338.Pa /dev/mem
339and
340.Pa /dev/kmem
341to worry about.  For that matter,
342the intruder can still write to raw disk devices.
343Also, there is another kernel feature called the module loader,
344.Xr kldload 8 .
345An enterprising intruder can use a KLD module to install
346his own bpf device or other sniffing device on a running kernel.
347To avoid these problems you have to run
348the kernel at a higher secure level, at least securelevel 1.  The securelevel
349can be set with a sysctl on the kern.securelevel variable.  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 then 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
407and
408.Pa /usr/local/etc
409even more often.  When mismatches are found relative to the base md5
410information the limited-access machine knows is valid, it should scream at
411a sysadmin to go check it out.  A good security script will also check for
412inappropriate suid binaries and for new or deleted files on system partitions
413such as
414.Pa /
415and
416.Pa /usr
417.Pp
418When using ssh rather then NFS, writing the security script is much more
419difficult.   You essentially have to
420.Pa scp
421the scripts to the client box in order to run them, making them visible, and
422for safety you also need to scp the binaries (such as find) that those scripts
423use.  The ssh daemon on the client box may already be compromised.  All in all,
424using ssh may be necessary when running over unsecure links, but it's also a
425lot harder to deal with.
426.Pp
427A good security script will also check for changes to user and staff members
428access configuration files:
429.Pa .rhosts ,
430.Pa .shosts ,
431.Pa .ssh/authorized_keys
432and so forth... files that might fall outside the purview of the MD5 check.
433.Pp
434If you have a huge amount of user disk space it may take too long to run
435through every file on those partitions.  In this case, setting mount
436flags to disallow suid binaries and devices on those partitions is a good
437idea.  The
438.Sq nodev
439and
440.Sq nosuid
441options
442(see
443.Xr mount 8 )
444are what you want to look into.  I would scan them anyway at least once a
445week, since the object of this layer is to detect a break-in whether or
446not the breakin is effective.
447.Pp
448Process accounting
449(see
450.Xr accton 8 )
451is a relatively low-overhead feature of
452the operating system which I recommend using as a post-break-in evaluation
453mechanism.  It is especially useful in tracking down how an intruder has
454actually broken into a system, assuming the file is still intact after
455the break-in occurs.
456.Pp
457Finally, security scripts should process the log files and the logs themselves
458should be generated in as secure a manner as possible - remote syslog can be
459very useful.  An intruder tries to cover his tracks, and log files are critical
460to the sysadmin trying to track down the time and method of the initial
461break-in.  One way to keep a permanent record of the log files is to run
462the system console to a serial port and collect the information on a
463continuing basis through a secure machine monitoring the consoles.
464.Sh PARANOIA
465A little paranoia never hurts.  As a rule, a sysadmin can add any number
466of security features as long as they do not affect convenience, and
467can add security features that do affect convenience with some added
468thought.  Even more importantly, a security administrator should mix it up
469a bit - if you use recommendations such as those given by this manual
470page verbatim, you give away your methodologies to the prospective
471hacker who also has access to this manual page.
472.Sh SPECIAL SECTION ON D.O.S. ATTACKS
473This section covers Denial of Service attacks.  A DOS attack is typically
474a packet attack.  While there isn't much you can do about modern spoofed
475packet attacks that saturate your network, you can generally limit the damage
476by ensuring that the attacks cannot take down your servers.
477.Bl -enum -offset indent
478.It
479Limiting server forks
480.It
481Limiting springboard attacks (ICMP response attacks, ping broadcast, etc...)
482.It
483Kernel Route Cache
484.El
485.Pp
486A common D.O.S. attack is against a forking server that attempts to cause the
487server to eat processes, file descriptors, and memory until the machine
488dies.  Inetd
489(see
490.Xr inetd 8 )
491has several options to limit this sort of attack.
492It should be noted that while it is possible to prevent a machine from going
493down it is not generally possible to prevent a service from being disrupted
494by the attack.  Read the inetd manual page carefully and pay specific attention
495to the
496.Fl c ,
497.Fl C ,
498and
499.Fl R
500options.  Note that spoofed-IP attacks will circumvent
501the
502.Fl C
503option to inetd, so typically a combination of options must be used.
504Some standalone servers have self-fork-limitation parameters.
505.Pp
506Sendmail has its
507.Fl OMaxDaemonChildren
508option which tends to work much
509better than trying to use sendmail's load limiting options due to the
510load lag.  You should specify a
511.Cm MaxDaemonChildren
512parameter when you start
513sendmail high enough to handle your expected load but no so high that the
514computer cannot handle that number of sendmails without falling on its face.
515It is also prudent to run sendmail in queued mode
516.Pq Fl ODeliveryMode=queued
517and to run the daemon
518.Pq Cm sendmail -bd
519separate from the queue-runs
520.Pq Cm sendmail -q15m .
521If you still want realtime delivery you can run the queue
522at a much lower interval, such as
523.Fl q1m ,
524but be sure to specify a reasonable
525.Cm MaxDaemonChildren
526option for that sendmail to prevent cascade failures.
527.Pp
528Syslogd can be attacked directly and it is strongly recommended that you use
529the
530.Fl s
531option whenever possible, and the
532.Fl a
533option otherwise.
534.Pp
535You should also be fairly careful
536with connect-back services such as tcpwrapper's reverse-identd, which can
537be attacked directly.  You generally do not want to use the reverse-ident
538feature of tcpwrappers for this reason.
539.Pp
540It is a very good idea to protect internal services from external access
541by firewalling them off at your border routers.  The idea here is to prevent
542saturation attacks from outside your LAN, not so much to protect internal
543services from network-based root compromise.  Always configure an exclusive
544firewall, i.e.\&
545.So
546firewall everything *except* ports A, B, C, D, and M-Z
547.Sc .
548This
549way you can firewall off all of your low ports except for certain specific
550services such as named
551(if you are primary for a zone),
552ntalkd, sendmail,
553and other internet-accessible services.
554If you try to configure the firewall the other
555way - as an inclusive or permissive firewall, there is a good chance that you
556will forget to
557.Sq close
558a couple of services or that you will add a new internal
559service and forget to update the firewall.  You can still open up the
560high-numbered port range on the firewall to allow permissive-like operation
561without compromising your low ports.  Also take note that
562.Dx
563allows you to
564control the range of port numbers used for dynamic binding via the various
565net.inet.ip.portrange sysctl's
566.Pq Li "sysctl -a | fgrep portrange" ,
567which can also
568ease the complexity of your firewall's configuration.  I usually use a normal
569first/last range of 4000 to 5000, and a hiport range of 49152 to 65535, then
570block everything under 4000 off in my firewall
571(except for certain specific
572internet-accessible ports, of course).
573.Pp
574Another common D.O.S. attack is called a springboard attack - to attack a server
575in a manner that causes the server to generate responses which then overload
576the server, the local network, or some other machine.  The most common attack
577of this nature is the ICMP PING BROADCAST attack.  The attacker spoofs ping
578packets sent to your LAN's broadcast address with the source IP address set
579to the actual machine they wish to attack.  If your border routers are not
580configured to stomp on ping's to broadcast addresses, your LAN winds up
581generating sufficient responses to the spoofed source address to saturate the
582victim, especially when the attacker uses the same trick on several dozen
583broadcast addresses over several dozen different networks at once.  Broadcast
584attacks of over a hundred and twenty megabits have been measured.  A second
585common springboard attack is against the ICMP error reporting system.  By
586constructing packets that generate ICMP error responses, an attacker can
587saturate a server's incoming network and cause the server to saturate its
588outgoing network with ICMP responses.  This type of attack can also crash the
589server by running it out of mbuf's, especially if the server cannot drain the
590ICMP responses it generates fast enough.  The
591.Dx
592kernel has a new kernel
593compile option called ICMP_BANDLIM which limits the effectiveness of these
594sorts of attacks.  The last major class of springboard attacks is related to
595certain internal inetd services such as the udp echo service.  An attacker
596simply spoofs a UDP packet with the source address being server A's echo port,
597and the destination address being server B's echo port, where server A and B
598are both on your LAN.  The two servers then bounce this one packet back and
599forth between each other.  The attacker can overload both servers and their
600LANs simply by injecting a few packets in this manner.  Similar problems
601exist with the internal chargen port.  A competent sysadmin will turn off all
602of these inetd-internal test services.
603.Pp
604Spoofed packet attacks may also be used to overload the kernel route cache.
605Refer to the net.inet.ip.rtexpire, rtminexpire, and rtmaxcache sysctl
606parameters.  A spoofed packet attack that uses a random source IP will cause
607the kernel to generate a temporary cached route in the route table, viewable
608with
609.Sq netstat -rna \&| fgrep W3 .
610These routes typically timeout in 1600
611seconds or so.  If the kernel detects that the cached route table has gotten
612too big it will dynamically reduce the rtexpire but will never decrease it to
613less then rtminexpire.  There are two problems:  (1) The kernel does not react
614quickly enough when a lightly loaded server is suddenly attacked, and (2) The
615rtminexpire is not low enough for the kernel to survive a sustained attack.
616If your servers are connected to the internet via a T3 or better it may be
617prudent to manually override both rtexpire and rtminexpire via
618.Xr sysctl 8 .
619Never set either parameter to zero
620(unless you want to crash the machine :-)).
621Setting both parameters to 2 seconds should be sufficient to protect the route
622table from attack.
623.Sh ACCESS ISSUES WITH KERBEROS AND SSH
624There are a few issues with both kerberos and ssh that need to be addressed
625if you intend to use them.  Kerberos V is an excellent authentication
626protocol but the kerberized telnet and rlogin suck rocks.  There are bugs that
627make them unsuitable for dealing with binary streams.  Also, by default
628kerberos does not encrypt a session unless you use the
629.Fl x
630option.  Ssh encrypts everything by default.
631.Pp
632Ssh works quite well in every respect except when it is set up to
633forward encryption keys.
634What this means is that if you have a secure workstation holding
635keys that give you access to the rest of the system, and you ssh to an
636unsecure machine, your keys becomes exposed.  The actual keys themselves are
637not exposed, but ssh installs a forwarding port for the duration of your
638login and if a hacker has broken root on the unsecure machine he can utilize
639that port to use your keys to gain access to any other machine that your
640keys unlock.
641.Pp
642We recommend that you use ssh in combination with kerberos whenever possible
643for staff logins.  Ssh can be compiled with kerberos support.  This reduces
644your reliance on potentially exposable ssh keys while at the same time
645protecting passwords via kerberos.  Ssh keys
646should only be used for automated tasks from secure machines (something
647that kerberos is unsuited to).  We also recommend that you either turn off
648key-forwarding in the ssh configuration, or that you make use of the
649.Pa "from=IP/DOMAIN"
650option that ssh allows in its
651.Pa authorized_keys
652file to make the key only usable to entities logging in from specific
653machines.
654.Sh SEE ALSO
655.Xr chflags 1 ,
656.Xr find 1 ,
657.Xr kerberos 1 ,
658.Xr md5 1 ,
659.Xr netstat 1 ,
660.Xr openssl 1 ,
661.Xr ssh 1 ,
662.Xr xdm 1 ,
663.Xr group 5 ,
664.Xr ttys 5 ,
665.Xr accton 8 ,
666.Xr init 8 ,
667.Xr sshd 8 ,
668.Xr sysctl 8 ,
669.Xr syslogd 8 ,
670.Xr vipw 8
671.Sh HISTORY
672The
673.Nm
674manual page was originally written by
675.An Matthew Dillon
676and first appeared
677in
678.Fx 3.1 ,
679December 1998.
680