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Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

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Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#41

Post by deng »

tgv wrote: post #36
deng wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's your best shot against systemd? - Linux packagers decide to patch sshd to use libsystemd for a notification, that could have been trivially done without this library. - libsystemd depends on libzlma - libzlma depends on xz And therefore, systemd is insecure? And what does this have to do with the fact that SUID is a terrible idea that needs to go?

First, getting rid of setuid (I guess you'd have to get rid of the whole thing, not just the permission bit) is not the same as making systemd an integral part of the OS. Second, when even the package maintainers can make such "trivial" mistakes, something is wrong. You'd expect a component such as systemd to be much more trustworthy than some random library. I'm not arguing against systemd, just that it seems to gro…

> First, getting rid of setuid (I guess you'd have to get rid of the whole thing, not just the permission bit) is not the same as making systemd an integral part of the OS.

It absolutely is. sudo allows you to execute code as another user. If you want to do that without giving sudo itself administrative privileges, this has to be done through the service manager, which creates a completely new, elevated process and handles communication with that. This is how it should be done (and BTW, this is pretty much how also the new sudo for Windows works). Now Lennart for some reason prefers systemd as this service manager - you might disagree with that choice, but then come up with a better one.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#42

Post by [deleted] »

constantcrying wrote: post #39

Why do they have to do this? This is really, really stupid. My issue isn't even that someone tries to replace sudo. That may or may not be a completely fine thing to do, depending on the state of sudo and what improvements can be made. But what makes me really upset is this completely unexplainable need to make everything part of one particular init system. There is absolutely no reason to tie your new sudo replaceme…

[deleted]

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#43

Post by Xylakant »

lmm wrote: post #32
deng wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's your best shot against systemd? - Linux packagers decide to patch sshd to use libsystemd for a notification, that could have been trivially done without this library. - libsystemd depends on libzlma - libzlma depends on xz And therefore, systemd is insecure? And what does this have to do with the fact that SUID is a terrible idea that needs to go?

> - Linux packagers decide to patch sshd to use libsystemd for a notification, that could have been trivially done without this library. Why was that? Would that "trivial" approach have broken the next time systemd made one of their incompatible interface changes, perhaps? Was using libsystemd the kind of thing the systemd maintainers recommended? > And therefore, systemd is insecure? Systems with systemd had a vulne…

You're not making a very good point here. A lot of packages have a transitive dependency on liblzma - for example everything that depends on libxml since that depends on liblzma https://packages.debian.org/sid/libxml2. LZMA is a pretty widely used compression algorithm, I'm absolutely certain there's other juicy targets that depend on liblzma.

The reason why "only" sshd on debian/ubuntu was affected is that the attacker chose to tailor their exploit to those systems. Systemd was the vehicle, debian patching opensshd was what made this specific incarnation of the attack possible, but essentially, both trusted a widely used library.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#44

Post by KaiserPro »

Thats fine, and lord knows we probably need a replacement to sudo.

However, sudo needs to be user friendly and fail safe with decent information as to why its failed. Something that service files historically didn't do.

But, the way it's supported also needs to change, it almost certainly needs to be decoupled from systemd's release cycle.

I hope that we have all learnt from early systemd, and that we all won't take a "lets piss on each other's chips" approach. I'm too old you you lot to start flame warring over stuff you'll never actually fucking use.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#45

Post by kbar13 »

systemd has been a net positive for the linux ecosystem. remember when you had to write bash scripts to start, stop, restart services and handle any other signals you want to send it? nowadays it's a unit file (basically just an ini file) away with relatively straightforward API. and you can actually declare startup dependencies and other useful relationships past just "prepend a number signifying when it should run globally to the front of the filename". it's provided an extensible platform with which higher level orchestration frameworks like ansible / ignition can easily templatize services or other system configuration.

since the beginning of systemd people have moaned about how complex it is and how we're reinventing the wheel. yet time and time again the people actually working on the project show that the solution they've come up with is the result of the problem they're facing on a daily basis. it's quite annoying that the armchair linux experts complain about how "lol systemd is so stupid for reinventing the wheel, give me my shell scripts back", maybe think about whether or not you have a legitimate issue not being addressed by the solution proposed or if you are just getting rage baited by a headline.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#46

Post by dcow »

constantcrying wrote: post #39

Why do they have to do this? This is really, really stupid. My issue isn't even that someone tries to replace sudo. That may or may not be a completely fine thing to do, depending on the state of sudo and what improvements can be made. But what makes me really upset is this completely unexplainable need to make everything part of one particular init system. There is absolutely no reason to tie your new sudo replaceme…

Why is this stupid? It’s just an option for how to configure a system that uses systemd to allow commands to be run in a privileged execution context without a suid binary. What’s wrong with having options?

Why don’t you propose a better solution? How would your non-systemd solution actually work?

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#47

Post by frafra »

This is not new functionality:

"There’s a new tool in systemd, called “run0”. Or actually, it’s not a new tool, it’s actually the long-existing tool “systemd-run”, but when invoked under the “run0” name (via a symlink)".

systemd-run is very useful to run tasks with specific cgroups settings, or at a specific time. It asks for password whenever needed.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#48

Post by dcow »

kbar13 wrote: post #45

systemd has been a net positive for the linux ecosystem. remember when you had to write bash scripts to start, stop, restart services and handle any other signals you want to send it? nowadays it's a unit file (basically just an ini file) away with relatively straightforward API. and you can actually declare startup dependencies and other useful relationships past just "prepend a number signifying when it should run…

I love systemd.

Re: Run0, a systemd based alternative to sudo, announced

#49

Post by Starlevel004 »

constantcrying wrote: post #39

Why do they have to do this? This is really, really stupid. My issue isn't even that someone tries to replace sudo. That may or may not be a completely fine thing to do, depending on the state of sudo and what improvements can be made. But what makes me really upset is this completely unexplainable need to make everything part of one particular init system. There is absolutely no reason to tie your new sudo replaceme…

> But what makes me really upset is this completely unexplainable need to make everything part of one particular init system. There is absolutely no reason to tie your new sudo replacement to systemd. Absolutely none.

The systemd developers are tying it to systemd because they are systemd developers. If somebody else made something like this, it wouldn't be tied to systemd. But somebody else hasn't made something like this.

Sudo isn't going to just go away (unfortunately). You can keep using your CVE-ridden setuid binary as much as you want.

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