Re: Ports 0-1023?

[David Schwartz <davids () webmaster com>]

On Thu, 04 Jul 2002 00:05:16 -0700, Blue Boar wrote:
> Is there any point in needing to be root in order to allocate the low ports
> on unix-like systems, anymore?  Could we get away from having to have some
> daemons even have a root stub in order to listen on a low port?  What would
> break, and what new holes would be created?  Could some sort of port ACL
> simply be used that says a particular UID can allocate a particular range
> of ports?
>
> Discuss.

        Imagine if inetd crashes or someone finds a way to crash it. They then set
up their own telnet daemon on port 23 and capture passwords. Not good.

        I'm safe, you say, because I don't use telnet, I only use secure login tools
like ssh. You're dreaming, I say, a trojaned ssh could do just as much damage
even though it can't acquire the password since it can do a chown/chmod+s.

        This sounds like a very bad idea to me.

        DS