[Gllug] Default messages perm

[Nix]

On Sun, 4 Jun 2006, Bruce Richardson announced authoritatively:
> On Sun, Jun 04, 2006 at 01:04:38PM +0100, Nix wrote:
>> 
>> Perhaps you don't care who can read those logfiles?
>> 
>> Most non-security-critical logfiles on most machines I administer are
>> world-readable, simply for convenience's sake. If a nasty cracker's
>> reading some logfile would do no harm at all, why not make it world-
>> readable?
> 
> Because if something sensitive ever did start appearing in those log
> files (perhaps an upgrade caused some syslog confusion) then you are
> exposed until you realise and you retrofit security.

In that case the upgrade is buggy. Security-critical stuff should land
in the LOG_AUTH facility (and in my experience invariably does).

> In most computing environments, only sysadmins or key developers need to
> see the logs, so restricting log visibility to an admin group is no big
> hardship.

Yes, this happens at my workplace. About once a week it gets in my way.
(Of *course* nobody considers changing the permissions. After all this
might let a *cracker* into our systems... our systems with dozens of
identical passwords all spottable by crack in seconds, and no shadow
passwords, *sigh*)

> If you are secure by default, it's actually easier to be flexible when
> necessary.

This is only true if your sysadmins are responsive :( it takes literally
*years* to get them to read their email at any of the places I've worked.

-- 
`Voting for any American political party is fundamentally
 incomprehensible.' --- Vadik
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