[akonstam: Re: A security flaw question - a clarification]

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

> >
> > I have a security question for the group. We have ~50 Linux machines
J> > that are NIS clients of out server. The idea as you know is that any
> > of are students can log in to any of the machines and have the same
> > home directory and the same passwd.
> >
> 
> This would only happen if you have givin all the students the same user 
> account and password which is a bad idea from the start.  Each student should 
> have their own user account and password, which would give each student their 
> own home directory.

I guess I am not clear. The students have different user accounts and
passwds but their user accounts and passwds work on all the NIS
clients.
> 
> > Ok, now the question. I have been hearing from people about security
> > flaws. Well what about about this. A number of our faculty have set up
> > their personal machines as NIS clients. It makes it easier to get to
> > their class related files. My feeling this is a tremendous security
> > hole, since a first important step in hacking a machine might be logging in
> > to the machine. Making faculty personal machines NIS clients
> > means that any of the 1000 or so students can log in to the faculty
> > machine. Does any one else think that this is a bad idea, or am I
> > confused?
> > --
> It is only a security hole "if" the teacher remains logged in while away from 
> their machine. if so, anyone could use the machine and would be logged in as 
> the instructor. If the instructor logs out, then the students would not have 
> access to the computer. to prevent this you could have the computer log them 
> out after a certain time out and stress to the instructors that for security 
> it is important for them to log out of their machine.
> 
> James Carver
No that is not the problem I am talking about. To hack a machine
remotely is a hell of a lot harder to do from a different machine
than it is if you are logged on to the machine you want to hack. It
has nothing to so with whether or not the instructor leaves his
machine logged on. Well not nothing but I am not talking about that
situation.

I am not concerned if people disagree with me but I am frustrated that
I can't clearly formulate my question so people see what I am asking.
-- 

=======================================================================
If you want to know how old a man is, ask his brother-in-law.
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: (210)-999-7484