Re: [PEN-TEST] Firewall identification and penetration

[Mike Ireton <mike () LIBRITAS COM>]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2000, Ben Lull wrote:
>     Seeing a system from a super user's standpoint may allow you to see things
> which you won't see as a normal user, but it may also cause you to over look
> other things which only a normal user would notice.  To use the sudo reference
> above, a super user sees a poorly configured sudoers file.  A normal user sees
> the account he has, allows sudo access.  Even if you were to create a very well
> configured sudeors file, the normal user will not know this, thus spinning off
> into subsets of tests to determine what can and can't be done with sudo.  The
> sudoers file may be secured, but because the normal user does not know this, he
> may inadvertently find another security hole which was over looked.
        Oh I agree with you %100. A tester with non-privilidged access is
going to pull every trick in the book to GET privilidged access, and so
will push non-privilidged access level to the hilt, pounding on anything
in their path. But I still belive it's advantagous to have privilidged
access for the reason of checking up on systems configurations that may
require impossible-to-identify-otherwise conditions to exploit. I think it
makes a lot of sense when you consider that most sysadmins (no flames to
anyone) don't really have much of a clue when it comes to secure systems
configuration and are prone to thinking of 'making it work at all' and
leaving it that way once it's going.

--
Mike Ireton
Senior Systems Engineer
Libritas, Inc (Formerly Bay Office Net) - http://www.libritas.com
Voice (510) 740-7700            Where do you want to go today?
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