*BSD News Article 70949


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From: j@ida.interface-business.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: revoking root privledges from httpd
Date: 14 Jun 1996 08:48:51 GMT
Organization: interface business GmbH, Dresden
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Message-ID: <4pr91j$73r@innocence.interface-business.de>
References: <31BC1070.E88@atlanticfoods.com>
  <4pm0bp$91v@innocence.interface-business.de> <4pn78n$3nl@moon.igcom.net>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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david@terra.igcom.net (David B. Bauman) wrote:

> : > I've heard that it's a BAD thing to run httpd while SUID.  Granted I 
> : > need SUID to grab port 80, but how do I then revoke SU status from the 
> : > daemon?
> 
> : A correctly written httpd does this for you.

> Perhaps you can elaborate?  I have a correctly written httpd (apache)
> and all the process change ownerships once the httpd runs.  However,
> the first httpd process stays owned by root. This makes it hard for

That's okay, and i don't think it's a real security hole (which i
thought your original question was about).

> my dedicated www clients to kill -HUP their deamon.

How should the clients (that access the server across the network)
send a signal to their daemon anyway?  What it is for?  (A client
cannot modify the daemon's config file, so why do you even want to
send a sighup?)

-- 
J"org Wunsch					       Unix support engineer
joerg_wunsch@interface-business.de       http://www.interface-business.de/~j