On 20/03/19 3:01 AM, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> Hi Alfred,
>
> Alfred Morgan wrote on Tue, Mar 19, 2019 at 08:05:33AM -0500:
>
>> I tried starting a temporary httpd server on port 8080
>> as a user to serve some files and I found this error:
>> httpd: need root privileges
>>
>> I would think there would be value in letting httpd be run
>> by standard users.
> For security reasons, you absolutely do *not* want that.
>
> You do not want to run a network daemon as your normal login user.
> If the network daemon contained a bug, remote attackers might
> read or modify the private files of your local user.
>
> You really want the network daemon to run as a *dedicated* user
> which doesn't have access to resources it doesn't need. On OpenBSD,
> that low-privileged user is called "www":
>
> $ ps -Ao user,command | grep [h]ttpd
> www httpd: server (httpd)
> root /usr/sbin/httpd
> www httpd: server (httpd)
> www httpd: logger (httpd)
> www httpd: server (httpd)
>
> This is *privilege separation*. In particular, you want the "logger"
> process and the "server" processes chroot(2)ed and setresuid(2)ed to
> www, see proc.c, proc_run(), all of which requires root privileges
> to set up.
>
> Starting up a network daemon without root privileges would be
> inherently insecure.
Yes.
But is the error message:
httpd: need root privileges
Accurate?
--
If not me then who? If not now then when? If not here then where?
So, here I stand, I can do no other
r...@worik.org 021-1680650, (03) 4821804 Aotearoa (New Zealand)
