Re: disabling shell-escape

2014-05-11 Thread Shawn Zaidermann
I understand. There is definitely always that possibility that users 
will get a shell. However, can SELinux help in this case? Perhaps I can 
confined the users with basic access, one that does not allow a user to 
run any execution from their home or /tmp. We have a debian deployment 
but can migrate our users to CentOS without a problem. I realized 
running a chroot does not help much since the system only runs postfix 
and mutt. If I jail mutt, then I have to jail postfix and if I do that, 
I defeat the purpose of the jail entirely.


On 05/10/2014 05:01 PM, Derek Martin wrote:

On Fri, May 09, 2014 at 03:14:03PM -0700, Shawn Zaidermann wrote:

Is there a way to completely disable the shell-escape feature?

In short, no.  If you're trying to prevent mutt users from gaining any
access to the shell, you also have to concern yourself with things
like:

   my_var=`run arbitrary shell command here`

in the user's .muttrc.  The bottom line is Mutt was not designed for
restricted access... but then neither was any other e-mail client
AFAIK.

But also, as the author of rssh, I can tell you that this turns out to
be an extremely hard problem (though exactly how hard is somewhat OS
dependent), and is probably not worth your time.  The best you can
hope for is to restrict unsophisticated users; if you have savvy users
on your system and they REALLY want to get shell access, they probably
will.

You have to trust your users, and if you can't you've basically
already lost the battle.  If you do, then there's no point in
confining them to your idea of what's safe.





Re: disabling shell-escape

2014-05-11 Thread Suvayu Ali
Hi,

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 12:20:27PM -0700, Shawn Zaidermann wrote:
> I understand. There is definitely always that possibility that users will
> get a shell. However, can SELinux help in this case? Perhaps I can confined
> the users with basic access, one that does not allow a user to run any
> execution from their home or /tmp. We have a debian deployment but can
> migrate our users to CentOS without a problem. I realized running a chroot
> does not help much since the system only runs postfix and mutt. If I jail
> mutt, then I have to jail postfix and if I do that, I defeat the purpose of
> the jail entirely.

If you want to place such narrow restrictions on your users, why give
them a shell account at all (assuming that's how they will run mutt)?

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.


Re: Correct syntax of send hook

2014-05-11 Thread Guy Gold
Derek:

On Sat,May 10 06:49:PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> Mostly I reply here due to a curiosity:  Why is "'messed'" in single
> quotes here?  I see people do this increasingly often, and I don't get
> why.

Are you implying that  the single quotes should have been
escaped then ? ;)



-- 
GG


Re: Correct syntax of send hook

2014-05-11 Thread Patrick Shanahan
* Guy Gold  [05-11-14 07:38]:
> On Sat,May 10 06:49:PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> > Mostly I reply here due to a curiosity:  Why is "'messed'" in single
> > quotes here?  I see people do this increasingly often, and I don't get
> > why.
> 
> Are you implying that  the single quotes should have been
> escaped then ? ;)

Iiuc, the "comment" pertains to the "comment" rather than the "syntax of
send hook", ie: correct usage of the English "written" word.
-- 
(paka)Patrick Shanahan   Plainfield, Indiana, USA  @ptilopteri
http://en.opensuse.orgopenSUSE Community Memberfacebook/ptilopteri
http://wahoo.no-ip.orgPhoto Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2
Registered Linux User #207535@ http://linuxcounter.net


Re: disabling shell-escape

2014-05-11 Thread David Champion
You don't need to jail postfix for your situation.  Build Mutt with smtp
support, and set smtp_server to localhost.  Your SMTP processes will run
in the global context, and mutt will only need a socket to that.

* On 11 May 2014, Shawn Zaidermann wrote: 
> I understand. There is definitely always that possibility that users will
> get a shell. However, can SELinux help in this case? Perhaps I can confined
> the users with basic access, one that does not allow a user to run any
> execution from their home or /tmp. We have a debian deployment but can
> migrate our users to CentOS without a problem. I realized running a chroot
> does not help much since the system only runs postfix and mutt. If I jail
> mutt, then I have to jail postfix and if I do that, I defeat the purpose of
> the jail entirely.
> 
> On 05/10/2014 05:01 PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> >On Fri, May 09, 2014 at 03:14:03PM -0700, Shawn Zaidermann wrote:
> >>Is there a way to completely disable the shell-escape feature?
> >In short, no.  If you're trying to prevent mutt users from gaining any
> >access to the shell, you also have to concern yourself with things
> >like:
> >
> >   my_var=`run arbitrary shell command here`
> >
> >in the user's .muttrc.  The bottom line is Mutt was not designed for
> >restricted access... but then neither was any other e-mail client
> >AFAIK.
> >
> >But also, as the author of rssh, I can tell you that this turns out to
> >be an extremely hard problem (though exactly how hard is somewhat OS
> >dependent), and is probably not worth your time.  The best you can
> >hope for is to restrict unsophisticated users; if you have savvy users
> >on your system and they REALLY want to get shell access, they probably
> >will.
> >
> >You have to trust your users, and if you can't you've basically
> >already lost the battle.  If you do, then there's no point in
> >confining them to your idea of what's safe.
> >

-- 
David Champion • d...@bikeshed.us


Re: Correct syntax of send hook

2014-05-11 Thread Chris Bannister
On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 07:54:16AM -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
> * Guy Gold  [05-11-14 07:38]:
> > On Sat,May 10 06:49:PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> > > Mostly I reply here due to a curiosity:  Why is "'messed'" in single
> > > quotes here?  I see people do this increasingly often, and I don't get
> > > why.
> > 
> > Are you implying that  the single quotes should have been
> > escaped then ? ;)
> 
> Iiuc, the "comment" pertains to the "comment" rather than the "syntax of
> send hook", ie: correct usage of the English "written" word.

I believe he understood that and was making a joke, i.e. in English
should the single quotes be escaped then.

At least I laughed. :)

More worrying are the strange ammendments that American English is
imposing (or has imposed) on us people who speak the proper English!

-- 
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the 
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


Re: Correct syntax of send hook

2014-05-11 Thread Mark Filipak
On 2014/5/11 11:08 PM, Chris Bannister wrote:
-snip-
> More worrying are the strange ammendments that American English is
> imposing (or has imposed) on us people who speak the proper English!

I'm sorry, but as an American I have to come out of lurk mode for this...

What you tried to write, Chris, refers to those "who speak" in the
nominative case. The phrase at the end of your sentence should therefore
begin "we", not "us". May I suggest "we who speak proper English!"
instead of "us people who speak the proper English!"

Regarding strange ammendments [sic] that American English is imposing, I
for one am appalled by what I regularly hear on the BBC World Service
(radio).

Ciao - Mark.




Re: Correct syntax of send hook

2014-05-11 Thread Mark Filipak
 On Sat,May 10 06:49:PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> Mostly I reply here due to a curiosity:  Why is "'messed'" in single
> quotes here?  I see people do this increasingly often, and I don't get
> why.

Are you a coder, Derek? I use single-quotes when I'm coding because it's
faster; I don't have to hit the shift key. Perhaps the objectionable
text you saw came from a coder.

Ciao - Mark.


Re: Correct syntax of send hook

2014-05-11 Thread Cameron Simpson
While I'm glad you've got your syntax working, it is often easier (and more 
flexible) to move tricky shell incantations off into a script.


As an example, I run a specialish vim incantation as my mutt editor. My muttrc 
just says:


  set editor=muttedit

and "muttedit" is a script in my bin directory, code here:

  https://bitbucket.org/cameron_simpson/css/src/tip/bin/muttedit

It in turn sets editor to "vim-flowed", which is a small wrapper for vim that 
puts it in a suitable mode for editing email with format-flowed:


  https://bitbucket.org/cameron_simpson/css/src/tip/bin/vim-flowed

Stuff all that directly into a muttrc would be painful and near impossible to 
debug, at the least.


Writing yourself a special purpose shell script makes your muttrc simple and 
puts the code somewhere where it doesn't need lots of nested escaping.


Just a thought.

Cheers,
-- Cameron Simpson 

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian W. Kernighan


mutt && SMTP

2014-05-11 Thread Matthias Apitz

Hello,

Normally I use sendmail as MTA behind our beloved 'mutt'. While testing
some new installation I gave 'smtp_url' && friends a try. Is there some
log file or debug mode to see the SMTP exchange with the remote MTA?

Thanks in advance for any pointer

matthias
-- 
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E-mail: g...@unixarea.de |  \ /   - No HTML/RTF in E-mail
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Re: mutt && SMTP

2014-05-11 Thread Brendan Cully
On Monday, 12 May 2014 at 08:05, Matthias Apitz wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Normally I use sendmail as MTA behind our beloved 'mutt'. While testing
> some new installation I gave 'smtp_url' && friends a try. Is there some
> log file or debug mode to see the SMTP exchange with the remote MTA?
> 
> Thanks in advance for any pointer
> 
>   matthias

Build with --enable-debug and run with -d2 (or higher), and you'll get
a transcript in ~/.muttdebug0