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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

#751

Post by crabbone »

yorwba wrote: post #626
jimrandomh wrote: post #620

> Or in other words: the target command is invoked in an isolated exec context, freshly forked off PID 1, without inheriting any context from the client (well, admittedly, we do propagate $TERM, but that's an explicit exception, i.e. allowlist rather than denylist). I think in practice, this is going to be an endless source of problems, so much so that it won't be adopted. The usual use case of sudo is that you have…

I don't know what your sudo does, but mine requires the --preserve-env flag if you want the new process to have access to all your environment variables. The thing you're saying is going to be an endless source of problems should already be an endless source of problems! (And I think I've been briefly confused by some missing environment variable once or twice so far.)

Even without the flag, sudo preserves a bunch of stuff. And it's not even consistent. Some implementations preserve locale setting, while others don't for example.

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

#752

Post by 1oooqooq »

sfink wrote: post #747
sigil wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

run0 has already been exploited: https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/17854955875146385... There will be plenty more where that came from. Yet another terrible idea and terrible implementation from Poettering.

Huh. I'm not at all a fan of how Poettering operates, but it's neither the ideas nor the implementation where I'd fault him. Well, it depends on what you mean by implementation, I guess; I'm talking about the core "how does it do its thing", not the interface by which you use it. I think Poettering has great ideas and great implementation. It's the execution and interface that are often terrible. If the square peg do…

you have the wrong view point. he just have a different opinion than you.

he single handled managed to fool RH and all distros into turning Linux administration just like windows. systemctl list of services is so inspired by the atrocious windows' admin list of services (which have 3 fields supposed to describe the service, but they all just tell you the name again).

it's no wonder his reward was a job at Microsoft.

but again, he's good in all three aspects. you just disagree on building the torment Nexus that is putting Linux in the "standard certification" target for sysadmins.

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

#753

Post by sfink »

fn-mote wrote: post #152

Overall, this seems great. However... > [...] by default it will tint your terminal background in a reddish tone while you are operating with elevated privileges ?!! ouch ... seems orthogonal to the actual important parts. Disclaimer: I didn't try it.

Yeah, that's the part that stuck out for me. "sudo is bad because it does all these things it shouldn't do instead of just the one thing it's for and nothing else. My tool is good because it does just the one thing it's for — plus this other random thing because I think it's cool."

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

#754

Post by crabbone »

lupusreal wrote: post #653
lyu07282 wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what is perhaps something to consider is how much of an attack surface sudo is and how unaware people are of the fact. Many people think they can configure sudo to be safe to use for unprivileged users, by only allowing specific things to run with it. But they don't realize all the ways it can be abused for privilege escalation. Getting rid of all that configuration removes that false sense of security, which…

I think these problems are basically negligible because the amount of people trying to "configure sudo to be safe to use for unprivileged users, by only allowing specific things to run with it" is negligible. Virtually all users of sudo are using it on their own computer which they are the sole user and ultimately the administrator of. Even in corporate contexts where the company owns the machine instead of the user,…

> Virtually all users of sudo are using it on their own computer

Nope. If I had to guess, it's in containers, like Docker. And those run in lots of places, and often in places with easy access to company's cloud account, credit card info etc.

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

#755

Post by acdha »

cduzz wrote: post #628
olddustytrail wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For how long? Debian switched to systemd about 12 years ago, so at least that long.

A quick google indicates that it was made default in debian 8 in 2015, which is 9 years ago, not 12. Perhaps it was available prior to then, but so were daemontools, upstart, and probably a variety of other alternatives.

One thing to remember is that a lot of people use the testing distribution so they would have seen it before the Debian 8 release changed the default. The debate in the community took ages but one factor in concluding it was that people were using it for years without it being anything like the more hyperbolic predictions some opponents made.

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

#756

Post by hobobaggins »

airocker wrote: post #310

I have seldom come across unix multiuser environments getting used anymore for servers. Its generally just one user on one physical machine now a days. I understand run0's promise is still useful but i would really like to see the whole unix permission system simplified for just one user who has sudo access.

We use Userify which manages multiple user logins (via SSH) and sudo usage.. there are definitely many, many use cases for teams logging into remote servers, and most security frameworks (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, NIST, ISO 27000) require separate credentials for separate humans. Sudo has some issues, but it works very well and is well understood by many different tools.

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

#757

Post by mahkoh »

sigil wrote: post #741
jimrandomh wrote: post #620

> Or in other words: the target command is invoked in an isolated exec context, freshly forked off PID 1, without inheriting any context from the client (well, admittedly, we do propagate $TERM, but that's an explicit exception, i.e. allowlist rather than denylist). I think in practice, this is going to be an endless source of problems, so much so that it won't be adopted. The usual use case of sudo is that you have…

run0 has already been exploited: https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/17854955875146385... There will be plenty more where that came from. Yet another terrible idea and terrible implementation from Poettering.

The linked PoC requires that the attacker already has root so that it can disable the default ptrace protection.

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

#758

Post by lofenfew »

sigil wrote: post #741
jimrandomh wrote: post #620

> Or in other words: the target command is invoked in an isolated exec context, freshly forked off PID 1, without inheriting any context from the client (well, admittedly, we do propagate $TERM, but that's an explicit exception, i.e. allowlist rather than denylist). I think in practice, this is going to be an endless source of problems, so much so that it won't be adopted. The usual use case of sudo is that you have…

run0 has already been exploited: https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/17854955875146385... There will be plenty more where that came from. Yet another terrible idea and terrible implementation from Poettering.

What's the difference between this and ptracing the bash session that you run sudo under?

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

#759

Post by 1oooqooq »

datadrivenangel wrote: post #711
lyu07282 wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with Lennart so I'm curious what the argument is against the notion that SUID was a bad idea and we should move away from it in Linux?

SUID has flaws, but it's not clear that there are any more convenient alternatives?

you missed the memo. it's dbus. (wish i could end with /s)

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

#760

Post by acdha »

aragilar wrote: post #631
TZubiri wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine. Not every software needs to be infinitely configurable and open source just in case the configurations don't cover the needs of all. We need opinionated software, if you don't want to make any choice for me, you can't even give me an assembly editor for fear of forcing your CPU arch of choice.

You can't think of ways this could break things? I would find this a useful feature, but I'm also aware of how this works, and the issues it could cause.

It could, but this is a non-default tool focused on new use so the first question I’d ask is how many of the people using it are running the weird edge-case terminals where that’d break something. I wouldn’t want to end up in a Microsoft-style trap where nothing can improve because someone somewhere depends on strict fidelity with 1993.
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