Re: sudo again

[Andrew Cagney <ac131313@cygnus.com>]

Tom Tromey wrote:
> 
> Chris pointed out to me that I installed sudo but didn't test it, and
> it didn't work.  I looked into it.  It fails because none of us have
> passwords on sourceware.  This confuses PAM.
> 
> Fine.  I looked into making it use our kerberos passwords, but we
> don't have the krb4 PAM module installed (and don't we use krb5
> anyway?).  So I made it `promiscuous'.  This means that if you are
> listed in the sudoers file you won't need to use a password to use
> sudo.
> 
> Maybe this is lame and dangerous (?).  Another choice would be to give
> all the sudoers a real password.  That's an easy change to make: just
> revert my change in /etc/pam.d/sudo and tell the list (or ask me to do
> it).

First random thought.  What could go wrong.  I use it here....

Second random thought.  The moment the user has to perform
authentication (enter their password) while logged into sourceware,
you've got the makings of a security problem.  SUDO becomes an obvious
point of attack - capture those passwords.  The less authentication
mechanisms on the machine the better. Can what you want be achieved
using just SSH?

With respect to promsiscuous being lame or dangerous.  SUDO will make
little difference.  Going from a normal user will take 10 seconds
instead of 5.

	Andrew