Re: [Xen-users] XCP: Insecure Distro ?

[Adrien Guillon <aj.guillon@xxxxxxxxx>]

Security updates are common, and generally do not make major interface
changes by design.  I have no desire to update anything aside from
receiving fixes for buffer overflows, or other exploits that are found
in the wild.  The system in question should be in production for
several years, and security patches are inevitable during that period
of time.

It likely took some effort to eliminate /etc/shadow in the first
place, as this has been standard practice for a very long time.  I
will not debate the merits of storing hashes in /etc/passwd or
/etc/shadow because that debate ended a very long time ago.  Quite
simply this distro has a major security flaw.


On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 5:16 PM, riki <phobie@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Well, you are right from the multi-user point of view regarding the passwd
> file, but XCP is designed as appliance, xe utility or something speaking
> xapi is a way of interfacing it, no user other than root should access dom0.
>
> Updates - question of stability, i hope you do not want to risk reload of
> all your VM`s due to libc changes or something like that :).  You need to
> update what? Xen hypervisor? Openvswitch, xapi toolstack? Everything should
> be locked down on lower levels (network access to dom0, physical access to
> appliances).
>
> Try to change the point of view and stop looking at it as a standard
> multiuser linux enviroment.
>
> r.
>
> On 05/09/2011 10:41 PM, Adrien Guillon wrote:
>>
>> Hello mailing list!
>>
>> I have been working with XCP a little bit, and I have the impression
>> that this distro is insecure.  First, it does not look like update
>> repositories are enabled inside /etc/yum.repos.d, although I'm from an
>> apt background so I may be misinterpreting that.  Where will my
>> security updates come from?
>>
>> Next, it appears that the root password hash is directly stored inside
>> /etc/passwd, which is set to world-readable!  There does not appear to
>> be an /etc/shadow file at all.
>>
>> Unfortunately I am dropping the distro entirely due to security
>> concerns, I hope that these problems can be fixed.
>>
>> AJ
>>
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