Re: Secure popen

From: John Viega (viegaat_private)
Date: Thu Jun 21 2001 - 20:52:05 PDT

  • Next message: Glynn Clements: "RE: Secure popen"

    On Thu, Jun 21, 2001 at 11:47:04PM -0400, Chris Ess wrote:
    > > Actually, at the time I was using it at least (which is long in the
    > > past), qmail did/does purposefully ignore most sendmail-isms that
    > > other MTAs do not such as an /etc/aliases file.
    > 
    > This functionality was not added into qmail as a default due to reasons
    > I'm not familiar with.  qmail in its natural state is a pretty minimal
    > MTA, but it's also secure, which is something sendmail can't boast.
    
    Well, I think that's a bit unfair.  Dan is certainly as careful as one
    can expect a programmer to be, but that doesn't mean he is flawless.
    Also, I think that shrifts the recent state of sendmail a bit, which
    has had a huge auditing effort, etc.  Yes, sendmail is large and that
    makes it harder to secure.  But if you're a subscriber to the
    many-eyeballs theory, you can bet it's had a LOT more eyes than qmail,
    and how does that impact things?  
    
    When it comes to new-ish problems like format strings and some of the
    more esoteric signal handling problems, I don't think it's very fair
    to make any judgements based on that.  If people weren't aware of a
    problem, how could they design around it?  I think these problems
    could just as easily have happened to qmail.
    
    > I'm curious how many of the 'sendmail-isms' are supported by postfix.
    
    Everything except the big configuration file, IIRC (I don't pay too
    much attention to the state of MTAs).  Same aliases, and I think the
    same virtual user stuff, etc.  
    
    John
    



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