On 4/9/21 1:15 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 12:40, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> > wrote: > >> >> >> On 4/9/21 11:23 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote: >>> On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 12:19, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Fri, 9 Apr 2021 at 12:02, Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu> >>>> wrote: >>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On 4/9/21 10:47 AM, Binet, Valere (NIH/NIA/IRP) [C] wrote: >>>>>> The NIST and CIS baselines don't allow su, we have to use sudo on >>>>> government computers. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Could you enlighten me on the rationale behind that restriction? As, as >>>>> you already noticed, my [ancient, maybe] reasoning makes me arrive at >> an >>>>> opposite conclusion. (but mine is pure security consideration with full >>>>> trust vested into sysadmin, see below...) >>>>> >>>>> On a second guess: it is just for a separation of privileges, and >>>>> accounting of who did what which sudo brings to the table... Right? >>>>> >>>>> >>>> sudo brings into accounting and the ability to restrict a person to a >>>> single command. [That is hard to do well but it is possible.] It also >>>> allows for an easily auditable configuration file set so that you can >> see >>>> what should have been allowed and what shouldn't. Versus the usual 'oh >> lets >>>> make it setgid blah or setuid foo but restricted to this group..' and >>>> people forgetting it was done that way or why. >>>> >>>> That said it is like any tool can be used as a hammer when it should >> have >>>> remained a phillips head. >>>> >>>> >>> Finally sudo can allow for better RBAC rules where if that is needed you >>> had to have multiple su commands that were aligned to each role so that >>> people could not escape their jail. [My understanding is that this is >> where >>> your chosen OS shines >> >> > that should have been written as > > your chosen OS, FreeBSD, shines ... > Ah, I couldn't imagine someone remembers I use FreeBSD too. On servers that is. Number crunchers, workstations, and laptops of my users run CentOS (7), Ubuntu (laptops), and also Debian these days. Not mentioning MS Windows and MacOS, though probably should. As these are my choices too as well as those of my users. > my apology for dropping the packets as I thought i typed it but didn't > No need to apologize. I was indeed a bit puzzled thinking this must be something obvious - derived from the fact this is CentOS list maybe - still it was kind of escaping me so I asked ;-) Yes, I did start rating sudo higher than I did in the past after this thread (hijacked - my apologies if it was my doing, didn't mean though). Thanks, everybody, for your insights ! Valeri > > >> Which one OS would be that? >> >> Valeri >> >>> with sudo and this was lifted to other os's laster.] >>> By 2005 most .gov/.mil baselines required su to be no longer allowed >>> because of this. >>> >>> >> >> -- >> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >> Valeri Galtsev >> Sr System Administrator >> Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics >> Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics >> University of Chicago >> Phone: 773-702-4247 >> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ >> _______________________________________________ >> CentOS mailing list >> CentOS at centos.org >> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos >> > > -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++