RE: Security through Permissiveness: A Zen Riddle?

From: Tim Hollebeek (thollebeekat_private)
Date: Wed Jul 18 2001 - 07:23:43 PDT

  • Next message: Jesse Pollard: "RE: Security through Permissiveness: A Zen Riddle?"

    > 80 is the convention for http, 443 for https (http over SSL/TLS).
    > 
    > But your argument stands, neither service requires system 
    > privileges to run
    > (apart from opening that initial port).
    
    It should be noted that part of this distinction is historic ... back when
    few people had machines, but many many people had accounts, there was in
    fact a tangible difference in trust between "a machine I don't know" and
    "a random user on a machine I don't know".
    
    Services like identd, which are now more or less useless, are based on this
    distinction: a certain amount of trust for the average sysadmin, and less
    trust of the average user.
    
    Many things that don't need root privs run below 1024 for a similar reason:
    they are considered to be "machine wide" services, administered by root
    instead of just some user.
    
    Now, if only TCP supported something like: "somemachine.com:tim@80" then
    everyone could have their own web server ... :)
    
    Tim Hollebeek
    Research Scientist
    Cigital Labs
    
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