No forkbomb protection by default !?!

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

There's an interesting article on SecurityFocus about Linux Kernel Security.

Here's an interesting quote :

lopez · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:40 pm Post subject:

Check out Section #6 User/group limitations

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

I know that it's easy to fix this problem.

The fact is that this part of Gentoo is not secured by default!! Is there any good reason to not secure this by default??

This remembers some other OS... What's its name again?? Win.... Windows??

lopez · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:14 pm Post subject:

I guess its more of a design issue and how the distribution as a whole is released. Some developers might not want these restrictions on a release as they want to bring the box to its knees for testing purposes. Others strive for security and everything locked down as tight as can be. I guess it comes down to a release philosophy how is the final product presented. ?

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

If this is about a release philosophy, it does sounds like the good old release philosophy from Microsoft and Red Hat : close and patch all those unsecure things that you want to secure.

Like Jason Milled, from SecurityFocus, said in its article :

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

mark_lagace · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:48 pm Post subject:

I filed a bug report on this. With any luck something will be done.

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

d_m · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 6:40 pm Post subject:

I agree with befortin. I think for someone who walks through all the documentation on installing and setting up their system the expectation is "I haven't enabled all the flashy, new, crazy or risky things (bootsplash, ~x86, pure udev, etc.) but I do have a system that is in a good, secure default state.

Gentoo already does a similar thing with services: almost everyone wants sshd running, but I don't think anyone thinks it should be turned on by default. The best philosophy towards services is "start with none and let the user/admin choose which they want." I think similar attitudes with resouce limits, permissions, etc. make the same amount of sense.

I would rather that a developer or use who is doing something special and wants resource limits gone be the one to have to make a change. Like people have said, its the people who don't even realize that these limits aren't set (like inexperienced Windows/RedHat admins) who are going to get screwed under the current system.

Gentoo is about choice, but the choice in this case should be to make an insecure change, not to have to enable security.

EDIT: to clarify what I mean: rewriting tools or totally changing interfaces (like OpenBSD) isn't necessarily what Gentoo needs to do, but if there are standard or easily overridden things that can be done for security, they should IMO.

RE-EDIT: also, for the record, I'm running Gentoo on a multi-user server. There aren't many users, and I'm not sure any of them would know how to trash the system, but I'd like to think that desktop users (specifically developers) aren't the only ones the default setup is geared towards.
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befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

Nice, someone agrees

I agree that Gentoo isn't about securing everything as much as possible in the default installation (OpenBSD takes care of this). But still, it should (and it almost always does) provide somewhat secure default settings.

For example, when you install Samba, it doesn't share / with anonymous access allowed by default. And when you install NFS, root_squash is disabled by default for the same reason.

59729 · Apprentice Joined: 21 Jun 2004 Posts: 279

I agree to it should be secured as default, the user can always change it after if it is limiting things

digital_ · n00b Joined: 12 Feb 2005 Posts: 15

My 2 cents, put a mention of this in the install documentation and let the individual user decide.

I personally have zero need for process limits. Some people will, document it for them.

I don't view gentoo as a general-purpose distro (although it can be configured to be) and as such this is not something that should be a default. Before I get flamed, what I mean by general-purpose distro is one that is ready to run right off-the-shelf, like redhat or suse. There is an expectation in those distros that the system is ready for general use the minute it is installed. Gentoo isn't that type of system, the minute gentoo is installed (at least stage1) there is no X or any running services.

Gentoo is about customization not off-the-shelf ready to run. Flexibility comes at a price. Document this, let people decide what they want.

PS I personally choose to run gentoo as a general-purpose distro (using my own definition) but I rarely recommend it as such to others. The kind of people who would be happy with gentoo as a desktop system are my friends who are already running it.

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

I still wonder why someone would need to run an infinite number of processes...

Flexibility comes at a price, so does security. I think that it would be reasonable (on both the security and the usability sides) to limit the maximum number of processes that a user can run at a very high value and document it into the Gentoo doc...

beandog · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:27 pm Post subject:

d_m · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:33 pm Post subject:

d_m · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject:

sevo · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 12 Mar 2005 Posts: 79

flickerfly · l33t Joined: 08 Nov 2002 Posts: 677 Location: Lanham, MD

phil · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:46 pm Post subject:

Lepaca Kliffoth · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 7:12 pm Post subject:

Since nobody mentioned it... you can check if your box is vulnerable running the following command from bash:

Jake · Veteran Joined: 31 Jul 2003 Posts: 1132

befortin · Apprentice Joined: 10 Feb 2004 Posts: 193

DoS IS a security concern. Security is NOT only about firewalls, encryption, and exploits.

blueworm · l33t Joined: 09 May 2003 Posts: 962