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TomRhodesWritten by Mandatory Access ControlSynopsisMACMandatory Access ControlMAC&os; 5.X introduced new security extensions from the
TrustedBSD project based on the &posix;.1e draft. Two of the most
significant new security mechanisms are file system Access Control
- Lists (ACLs) and Mandatory Access Control
+ Lists (ACLs) and Mandatory Access Control
(MAC) facilities. Mandatory Access Control allows
new access control modules to be loaded, implementing new security
policies. Some provide protections of a narrow subset of the
system, hardening a particular service. Others provide
comprehensive labeled security across all subjects and objects.
The mandatory part
of the definition comes from the fact that the enforcement of
the controls is done by administrators and the system, and is
not left up to the discretion of users as is done with
discretionary access control (DAC, the standard
file and System V IPC permissions on &os;).This chapter will focus on the
Mandatory Access Control Framework (MAC Framework), and a set
of pluggable security policy modules enabling various security
mechanisms.After reading this chapter, you will know:What MAC security policy modules are currently
included in &os; and their associated mechanisms.What MAC security policy modules implement as
well as the difference between a labeled and non-labeled
policy.How to efficiently configure a system to use
the MAC framework.How to configure the different security policy modules included with the
MAC framework.How to implement a more secure environment using the
MAC framework and the examples
shown.How to test the MAC configuration
to ensure the framework has been properly implemented.Before reading this chapter, you should:Understand &unix; and &os; basics
().Be familiar with
the basics of kernel configuration/compilation
().Have some familiarity with security and how it
pertains to &os; ().The improper use of the
information contained herein may cause loss of system access,
aggravation of users, or inability to access the features
provided by X11. More importantly, MAC should not
be relied upon to completely secure a system. The
MAC framework only augments
existing security policy; without sound security practices and
regular security checks, the system will never be completely
secure.It should also be noted that the examples contained
within this chapter are just that, examples. It is not
recommended that these particular settings be rolled out
on a production system. Implementing the various security policy modules takes
a good deal of thought and testing. One who does not fully understand
exactly how everything works may find him or herself going
back through the entire system and reconfiguring many files
or directories.What Will Not Be CoveredThis chapter covers a broad range of security issues relating
to the MAC framework. The
development of new MAC security policy modules
will not be covered. A number of security policy modules included with the
MAC framework have specific characteristics
which are provided for both testing and new module
development. These include the &man.mac.test.4;,
&man.mac.stub.4; and &man.mac.none.4;.
For more information on these security policy modules and the various
mechanisms they provide, please review the manual pages.Key Terms in this ChapterBefore reading this chapter, a few key terms must be
explained. This will hopefully clear up any confusion that
may occur and avoid the abrupt introduction of new terms
and information.compartment: A compartment is a
set of programs and data to be partitioned or separated,
where users are given explicit access to specific components
of a system. Also, a compartment represents a grouping,
such as a work group, department, project, or topic. Using
compartments, it is possible to implement a need-to-know
security policy.high water mark: A high water mark
policy is one which permits the raising of security levels
for the purpose of accessing higher level information. In
most cases, the original level is restored after the process
is complete. Currently, the &os; MAC
framework does not have a policy for this, but the definition
is included for completeness.integrity: Integrity, as a key
concept, is the level of trust which can be placed on data.
As the integrity of the data is elevated, so does the ability
to trust that data.label: A label is a security
attribute which can be applied to files, directories, or
other items in the system. It could be considered
a confidentiality stamp; when a label is placed on
a file it describes the security properties for that specific
file and will only permit access by files, users, resources,
etc. with a similar security setting. The meaning and
interpretation of label values depends on the policy configuration: while
some policies might treat a label as representing the
integrity or secrecy of an object, other policies might use
labels to hold rules for access.level: The increased or decreased
setting of a security attribute. As the level increases,
its security is considered to elevate as well.low water mark: A low water mark
policy is one which permits lowering of the security levels
for the purpose of accessing information which is less
secure. In most cases, the original security level of the
user is restored after the process is complete. The only
security policy module in &os; to use this is
&man.mac.lomac.4;.multilabel: The
property is a file system option
which can be set in single user mode using the
&man.tunefs.8; utility, during the boot operation
using the &man.fstab.5; file, or during the creation of
a new file system. This option will permit an administrator
to apply different MAC labels on different
objects. This option
only applies to security policy modules which support labeling.object: An object or system
object is an entity through which information flows
under the direction of a subject.
This includes directories, files, fields, screens, keyboards,
memory, magnetic storage, printers or any other data
storage/moving device. Basically, an object is a data container or
a system resource; access to an object
effectively means access to the data.policy: A collection of rules
which defines how objectives are to be achieved. A
policy usually documents how certain
items are to be handled. This chapter will
consider the term policy in this
context as a security policy; i.e.
a collection of rules which will control the flow of data
and information and define whom will have access to that
data and information.sensitivity: Usually used when
discussing MLS. A sensitivity level is
a term used to describe how important or secret the data
should be. As the sensitivity level increases, so does the
importance of the secrecy, or confidentiality of the data.single label: A single label is
when the entire file system uses one label to
enforce access control over the flow of data. When a file
system has this set, which is any time when the
option is not set, all
files will conform to the same label setting.subject: a subject is any
active entity that causes information to flow between
objects; e.g. a user, user processor,
system process, etc. On &os;, this is almost always a thread
acting in a process on behalf of a user.Explanation of MACWith all of these new terms in mind, consider how the
MAC framework augments the security of
the system as a whole. The various security policy modules provided by
the MAC framework could be used to
protect the network and file systems, block users from
accessing certain ports and sockets, and more. Perhaps
the best use of the policy modules is to blend them together, by loading
several security policy modules at a time for a multi-layered
security environment. In a multi-layered security environment,
multiple policy modules are in effect to keep security in check. This
is different to a hardening policy, which typically hardens
elements of a system that is used only for specific purposes.
The only downside is administrative overhead in cases of
multiple file system labels, setting network access control
user by user, etc.These downsides are minimal when compared to the lasting
effect of the framework; for instance, the ability to pick and choose
which policies are required for a specific configuration keeps
performance overhead down. The reduction of support for unneeded
policies can increase the overall performance of the system as well as
offer flexibility of choice. A good implementation would
consider the overall security requirements and effectively implement
the various security policy modules offered by the framework.Thus a system utilizing MAC features
should at least guarantee that a user will not be permitted
to change security attributes at will; all user utilities,
programs and scripts must work within the constraints of
the access rules provided by the selected security policy modules; and
that total control of the MAC access
rules are in the hands of the system administrator.It is the sole duty of the system administrator to
carefully select the correct security policy modules. Some environments
may need to limit access control over the network; in these
cases, the &man.mac.portacl.4;, &man.mac.ifoff.4; and even
&man.mac.biba.4; policy modules might make good starting points. In other
cases, strict confidentiality of file system objects might
be required. Policy modules such as &man.mac.bsdextended.4;
and &man.mac.mls.4; exist for this purpose.Policy decisions could be made based on network
configuration. Perhaps only certain users should be permitted
access to facilities provided by &man.ssh.1; to access the
network or the Internet. The &man.mac.portacl.4; would be
the policy module of choice for these situations. But what should be
done in the case of file systems? Should all access to certain
directories be severed from other groups or specific
users? Or should we limit user or utility access to specific
files by setting certain objects as classified?In the file system case, access to objects might be
considered confidential to some users, but not to others.
For an example, a large development team might be broken
off into smaller groups of individuals. Developers in
project A might not be permitted to access objects written
by developers in project B. Yet they might need to access
objects created by developers in project C; that is quite a
situation indeed. Using the different security policy modules provided by
the MAC framework; users could
be divided into these groups and then given access to the
appropriate areas without fear of information
leakage.Thus, each security policy module has a unique way of dealing with
the overall security of a system. Module selection should be based
on a well thought out security policy. In many cases, the
overall policy may need to be revised and reimplemented on
the system. Understanding the different security policy modules offered by
the MAC framework will help administrators
choose the best policies for their situations.The default &os; kernel does not include the option for
the MAC framework; thus the following
kernel option must be added before trying any of the examples or
information in this chapter:options MACAnd the kernel will require a rebuild and a reinstall.While the various manual pages for MAC
policy modules state that they may be built into the kernel,
it is possible to lock the system out of
the network and more. Implementing MAC
is much like implementing a firewall, care must be taken
to prevent being completely locked out of the system. The
ability to revert back to a previous configuration should be
considered while the implementation of MAC
remotely should be done with extreme caution.Understanding MAC LabelsA MAC label is a security attribute
which may be applied to subjects and objects throughout
the system.When setting a label, the user must be able to comprehend
what it is, exactly, that is being done. The attributes
available on an object depend on the policy module loaded, and that
policy modules interpret their attributes in different
ways. If improperly configured due to lack of comprehension, or
the inability to understand the implications, the result will
be the unexpected and perhaps, undesired, behavior of the
system.The security label on an object is used as a part of a
security access control decision by a policy. With some
policies, the label by itself contains all information necessary
to make a decision; in other models, the labels may be processed
as part of a larger rule set, etc.For instance, setting the label of biba/low
on a file will represent a label maintained by the Biba security policy module,
with a value of low.A few policy modules which support the labeling feature in
&os; offer three specific predefined labels. These
are the low, high, and equal labels. Although they enforce
access control in a different manner with each policy module, you
can be sure that the low label will be the lowest setting,
the equal label will set the subject or object to be disabled
or unaffected, and the high label will enforce the highest
setting available in the Biba and MLS
policy modules.Within single label file system environments, only one label may be
used on objects. This will enforce one set of
access permissions across the entire system and in many
environments may be all that is required. There are a few
cases where multiple labels may be set on objects
or subjects in the file system. For those cases, the
option may be passed to
&man.tunefs.8;.In the case of Biba and MLS, a numeric
label may be set to indicate the precise level of hierarchical
control. This numeric level is used to partition or sort
information into different groups of say, classification only
permitting access to that group or a higher group level.In most cases the administrator will only be setting up a
single label to use throughout the file system.Hey wait, this is similar to DAC!
I thought MAC gave control strictly to the
administrator. That statement still holds true, to some
extent as root is the one in control and who
configures the policies so that users are placed in the
appropriate categories/access levels. Alas, many policy modules can
restrict the root user as well. Basic
control over objects will then be released to the group, but
root may revoke or modify the settings
at any time. This is the hierarchal/clearance model covered
by policies such as Biba and MLS.Label ConfigurationVirtually all aspects of label policy module configuration
will be performed using the base system utilities. These
commands provide a simple interface for object or subject
configuration or the manipulation and verification of
the configuration.All configuration may be done by use of the
&man.setfmac.8; and &man.setpmac.8; utilities.
The setfmac command is used to set
MAC labels on system objects while the
setpmac command is used to set the labels
on system subjects. Observe:&prompt.root; setfmac biba/high testIf no errors occurred with the command above, a prompt
will be returned. The only time these commands are not
quiescent is when an error occurred; similarly to the
&man.chmod.1; and &man.chown.8; commands. In some cases this
error may be a Permission denied and
is usually obtained when the label is being set or modified
on an object which is restricted.Other conditions
may produce different failures. For instance, the file may not
be owned by the user attempting to relabel the object, the
object may not exist or may be read only. A mandatory policy
will not allow the process to relabel the file, maybe because
of a property of the file, a property of the process, or a
property of the proposed new label value. For example: a user
running at low integrity tries to change the label of a high
integrity file. Or perhaps a user running at low integrity
tries to change the label of a low integrity file to a high
integrity label. The system administrator
may use the following commands to overcome this:&prompt.root; setfmac biba/high testPermission denied
&prompt.root; setpmac biba/low setfmac biba/high test
&prompt.root; getfmac test
test: biba/highAs we see above, setpmac
can be used to override the policy module's settings by assigning
a different label to the invoked process. The
getpmac utility is usually used with currently
running processes, such as sendmail:
although it takes a process ID in place of
a command the logic is extremely similar. If users
attempt to manipulate a file not in their access, subject to the
rules of the loaded policy modules, the
Operation not permitted error
will be displayed by the mac_set_link
function.Common Label TypesFor the &man.mac.biba.4;, &man.mac.mls.4; and
&man.mac.lomac.4; policy modules, the ability to assign
simple labels is provided. These take the form of high,
equal and low, what follows is a brief description of
what these labels provide:The low label is considered the
lowest label setting an object or subject may have.
Setting this on objects or subjects will block their
access to objects or subjects marked high.The equal label should only be
placed on objects considered to be exempt from the
policy.The high label grants an object or
subject the highest possible setting.With respect to each policy module, each of those settings
will instate a different information flow directive. Reading
the proper manual pages will further explain the traits of
these generic label configurations.Advanced Label ConfigurationNumeric grade labels are used for
comparison:compartment+compartment; thus
the following:biba/10:2+3+6(5:2+3-20:2+3+4+5+6)May be interpreted as:Biba Policy Label/Grade 10
:Compartments 2, 3 and 6:
(grade 5 ...)In this example, the first grade would be considered
the effective grade with
effective compartments, the second grade
is the low grade and the last one is the high grade.
In most configurations these settings will not be used;
indeed, they offered for more advanced
configurations.When applied to system objects, they will only have a
current grade/compartments as opposed to system subjects
as they reflect the range of available rights in the system,
and network interfaces, where they are used for access
control.The grade and compartments in a subject and object pair
are used to construct a relationship referred to as
dominance, in which a subject dominates an
object, the object dominates the subject, neither dominates
the other, or both dominate each other. The
both dominate case occurs when the two labels
are equal. Due to the information flow nature of Biba, you
have rights to a set of compartments,
need to know, that might correspond to
projects, but objects also have a set of compartments.
Users may have to subset their rights using
su or setpmac in order
to access objects in a compartment from which they are not
restricted.Users and Label SettingsUsers themselves are required to have labels so that
their files and processes may properly interact with the
security policy defined on the system. This is
configured through the login.conf file
by use of login classes. Every policy module that uses labels
will implement the user class setting.An example entry containing every policy module setting is displayed
below:default:\
:copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\
:welcome=/etc/motd:\
:setenv=MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K:\
:path=~/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:\
:manpath=/usr/share/man /usr/local/man:\
:nologin=/usr/sbin/nologin:\
:cputime=1h30m:\
:datasize=8M:\
:vmemoryuse=100M:\
:stacksize=2M:\
:memorylocked=4M:\
:memoryuse=8M:\
:filesize=8M:\
:coredumpsize=8M:\
:openfiles=24:\
:maxproc=32:\
:priority=0:\
:requirehome:\
:passwordtime=91d:\
:umask=022:\
:ignoretime@:\
:label=partition/13,mls/5,biba/10(5-15),lomac/10[2]:The label option is used to set the
user class default label which will be enforced by
MAC. Users will never be permitted to
modify this value, thus it can be considered not optional
in the user case. In a real configuration, however, the
administrator will never wish to enable every policy module.
It is recommended that the rest of this chapter be reviewed
before any of this configuration is implemented.Users may change their label after the initial login;
however, this change is subject constraints of the policy.
The example above tells the Biba policy that a process's
minimum integrity is 5, its maximum is 15, but the default
effective label is 10. The process will run at 10 until
it chooses to change label, perhaps due to the user using
the setpmac command, which will be constrained by Biba to
the range set at login.In all cases, after a change to
login.conf, the login class capability
database must be rebuilt using cap_mkdb
and this will be reflected throughout every forthcoming
example or discussion.It is useful to note that many sites may have a
particularly large number of users requiring several
different user classes. In depth planning is required
as this may get extremely difficult to manage.Future versions of &os; will include a new way to
deal with mapping users to labels; however, this will
not be available until some time after &os; 5.3.Network Interfaces and Label SettingsLabels may also be set on network interfaces to help
control the flow of data across the network. In all cases
they function in the same way the policies function with
respect to objects. Users at high settings in
biba, for example, will not be permitted
to access network interfaces with a label of low.The may be passed to
ifconfig when setting the
MAC label on network interfaces. For
example:&prompt.root; ifconfig bge0 maclabel biba/equalwill set the MAC label of
biba/equal on the &man.bge.4; interface.
When using a setting similar to
biba/high(low-high) the entire label should
be quoted; otherwise an error will be returned.Each policy module which supports labeling has a tunable
which may be used to disable the MAC
label on network interfaces. Setting the label to
will have a similar effect. Review
the output from sysctl, the policy manual
pages, or even the information found later in this chapter
for those tunables.Singlelabel or Multilabel?By default the system will use the
option. But what does this
mean to the administrator? There are several differences
which, in their own right, offer pros and cons to the
flexibility in the systems security model.The only permits for one
label, for instance biba/high to be used
for each subject or object. It provides for lower
administration overhead but decreases the flexibility of
policies which support labeling. Many administrators may
want to use the option in
their security policy.The option will permit each
subject or object to have its own independent
MAC label in
place of the standard option
which will allow only one label throughout the partition.
The and
label options are only required for the policies which
implement the labeling feature, including the Biba, Lomac,
MLS and SEBSD
policies.In many cases, the may not need
to be set at all. Consider the following situation and
security model:&os; web-server using the MAC
framework and a mix of the various policies.This machine only requires one label,
biba/high, for everything in the system.
Here the file system would not require the
option as a single label
will always be in effect.But, this machine will be a web server and should have
the web server run at biba/low to prevent
write up capabilities. The Biba policy and how it works
will be discussed later, so if the previous comment was
difficult to interpret just continue reading and return.
The server could use a separate partition set at
biba/low for most if not all of its
runtime state. Much is lacking from this example, for
instance the restrictions on data, configuration and user
settings; however, this is just a quick example to prove the
aforementioned point.If any of the non-labeling policies are to be used,
then the option would never
be required. These include the seeotheruids,
portacl and partition
policies.It should also be noted that using
with a partition and establishing
a security model based on
functionality could open the doors for higher administrative
overhead as everything in the file system would have a label.
This includes directories, files, and even device
nodes.The following command will set
on the file systems to have multiple labels. This may only be
done in single user mode:&prompt.root; tunefs -l enable /This is not a requirement for the swap file
system.Some users have experienced problems with setting the
flag on the root partition.
If this is the case, please review the
of this chapter.Controlling MAC with TunablesWithout any modules loaded, there are still some parts
of MAC which may be configured using
the sysctl interface. These tunables
are described below and in all cases the number one (1)
means enabled while the number zero (0) means
disabled:security.mac.enforce_fs defaults to
one (1) and enforces MAC file system
policies on the file systems.security.mac.enforce_kld defaults to
one (1) and enforces MAC kernel linking
policies on the dynamic kernel linker (see
&man.kld.4;).security.mac.enforce_network defaults
to one (1) and enforces MAC network
policies.security.mac.enforce_pipe defaults
to one (1) and enforces MAC policies
on pipes.security.mac.enforce_process defaults
to one (1) and enforces MAC policies
on processes which utilize inter-process
communication.security.mac.enforce_socket defaults
to one (1) and enforces MAC policies
on sockets (see the &man.socket.2; manual page).security.mac.enforce_system defaults
to one (1) and enforces MAC policies
on system activities such as accounting and
rebooting.security.mac.enforce_vm defaults
to one (1) and enforces MAC policies
on the virtual memory system.Every policy or MAC option supports
tunables. These usually hang off of the
security.mac.<policyname> tree.
To view all of the tunables from MAC
use the following command:&prompt.root; sysctl -da | grep macThis should be interpreted as all of the basic
MAC policies are enforced by default.
If the modules were built into the kernel the system
would be extremely locked down and most likely unable to
communicate with the local network or connect to the Internet,
etc. This is why building the modules into the kernel is not
completely recommended. Not because it limits the ability to
disable features on the fly with sysctl,
but it permits the administrator to instantly switch the
policies of a system without the requirement of rebuilding
and reinstalling a new system.Planning the Security ConfigurationWhenever a new technology is implemented, a planning phase is
always a good idea. During the planning stages, an administrator
should in general look at the big picture, trying
to keep in view at least the following:The implementation requirements;The implementation goals;For MAC installations, these include:How to classify information and resources available on
the target systems.What sorts of information or resources to restrict
access to along with the type of restrictions that should be
applied.Which MAC module or modules will be
required to achieve this goal.It is always possible to reconfigure and change the
system resources and security settings, it is quite often very inconvenient to
search through the system and fix existing files and user
accounts. Planning helps to ensure a trouble-free and efficient
trusted system implementation. A trial run of the trusted system,
including the configuration, is often vital and definitely
beneficial before a MAC
implementation is used on production systems. The idea of just
letting loose on a system
with MAC is like setting up for failure.Different environments may have explicit needs and
requirements. Establishing an in depth and complete security
profile will decrease the need of changes once the system
goes live. As such, the future sections will cover the
different modules available to administrators; describe their
use and configuration; and in some cases provide insight on
what situations they would be most suitable for. For instance,
a web server might roll out the &man.mac.biba.4; and
&man.mac.bsdextended.4; policies. In other cases, a machine
with very few local users, the &man.mac.partition.4; might
be a good choice.Module ConfigurationEvery module included with the MAC
framework may be either compiled into the kernel as noted above
or loaded as a run-time kernel module.
The recommended method is to add the module name to the
/boot/loader.conf file so that it will load
during the initial boot operation.The following sections will discuss the various
MAC modules and cover their features.
Implementing them into a specific environment will also
be a consideration of this chapter. Some modules support
the use of labeling, which is controlling access by enforcing
a label such as this is allowed and this is not.
A label configuration file may control how files may be accessed,
network communication can be exchanged, and more. The previous
section showed how the flag could
be set on file systems to enable per-file or per-partition
access control.A single label configuration would enforce only one label
across the system, that is why the tunefs
option is called .The MAC seeotheruids ModuleMAC See Other UIDs PolicyModule name: mac_seeotheruids.koKernel configuration line:
options MAC_SEEOTHERUIDSBoot option:
mac_seeotheruids_load="YES"The &man.mac.seeotheruids.4; module mimics and extends
the security.bsd.see_other_uids and
security.bsd.see_other_gidssysctl tunables. This option does
not require any labels to be set before configuration and
can operate transparently with the other modules.After loading the module, the following
sysctl tunables may be used to control
the features:security.mac.seeotheruids.enabled
will enable the module's features and use the default
settings. These default settings will deny users the
ability to view processes and sockets owned by other
users.security.mac.seeotheruids.specificgid_enabled
will allow a certain group to be exempt from this policy.
To exempt specific groups from this policy, use the
security.mac.seeotheruids.specificgid=XXXsysctl tunable. In the above example,
the XXX should be replaced with the
numeric group ID to be exempted.security.mac.seeotheruids.primarygroup_enabled
is used to exempt specific primary groups from this policy.
When using this tunable, the
security.mac.seeotheruids.specificgid_enabled
may not be set.The MAC bsdextended ModuleMACFile System Firewall PolicyModule name: mac_bsdextended.koKernel configuration line:
options MAC_BSDEXTENDEDBoot option:
mac_bsdextended_load="YES"The &man.mac.bsdextended.4; module enforces the file system
firewall. This module's policy provides an extension to the
standard file system permissions model, permitting an
administrator to create a firewall-like ruleset to protect files,
utilities, and directories in the file system hierarchy. When
access to a file system object is attempted, the list of rules
is iterated until either a matching rule is located or the end
is reached. This behavior may be changed by the use of a
&man.sysctl.8; parameter,
security.mac.bsdextended.firstmatch_enabled. Similar to
other firewall modules in &os;, a file containing access control
rules can be created and read by the system at boot time using
an &man.rc.conf.5; variable.The rule list may be entered using a utility, &man.ugidfw.8;,
that has a syntax similar to that of &man.ipfw.8;. More tools
can be written by using the functions in the
&man.libugidfw.3; library.Extreme caution should be taken when working with this
module; incorrect use could block access to certain parts of
the file system.ExamplesAfter the &man.mac.bsdextended.4; module has
been loaded, the following command may be used to list the
current rule configuration:&prompt.root; ugidfw list
0 slots, 0 rulesAs expected, there are no rules defined. This means that
everything is still completely accessible. To create a rule
which will block all access by users but leave
root unaffected, simply run the
following command:&prompt.root; ugidfw add subject not uid root new object not uid root mode nIn releases prior to &os; 5.3, the
add parameter did not exist. In those
cases the set should be used
instead. See below for a command example.This is a very bad idea as it will block all users from
issuing even the most simple commands, such as
ls. A more patriotic list of rules
might be:&prompt.root; ugidfw set 2 subject uid user1 object uid user2 mode n
&prompt.root; ugidfw set 3 subject uid user1 object gid user2 mode nThis will block any and all access, including directory
listings, to user2's home
directory from the username user1.In place of user1, the
could
be passed. This will enforce the same access restrictions
above for all users in place of just one user.The root user will be unaffected
by these changes.This should provide a general idea of how the
&man.mac.bsdextended.4; module may be used to help fortify
a file system. For more information, see the
&man.mac.bsdextended.4; and the &man.ugidfw.8; manual
pages.The MAC ifoff ModuleMAC Interface Silencing PolicyModule name: mac_ifoff.koKernel configuration line:
options MAC_IFOFFBoot option: mac_ifoff_load="YES"The &man.mac.ifoff.4; module exists solely to disable network
interfaces on the fly and keep network interfaces from being
brought up during the initial system boot. It does not require
any labels to be set up on the system, nor does it have a
dependency on other MAC modules.Most of the control is done through the
sysctl tunables listed below.security.mac.ifoff.lo_enabled will
enable/disable all traffic on the loopback (&man.lo.4;)
interface.security.mac.ifoff.bpfrecv_enabled will
enable/disable all traffic on the Berkeley Packet Filter
interface (&man.bpf.4;)security.mac.ifoff.other_enabled will
enable/disable traffic on all other interfaces.One of the most common uses of &man.mac.ifoff.4; is network
monitoring in an environment where network traffic should not
be permitted during the boot sequence. Another suggested use
would be to write a script which uses
security/aide to automatically
block network traffic if it finds new or altered files in
protected directories.The MAC portacl ModuleMAC Port Access Control List PolicyModule name: mac_portacl.koKernel configuration line:
MAC_PORTACLBoot option: mac_portacl_load="YES"The &man.mac.portacl.4; module is used to limit binding to
local TCP and UDP ports
using a variety of sysctl variables. In
essence &man.mac.portacl.4; makes it possible to allow
non-root users to bind to specified
privileged ports, i.e. ports fewer than 1024.Once loaded, this module will enable the
MAC policy on all sockets. The following
tunables are available:security.mac.portacl.enabled will
enable/disable the policy completely.Due to
a bug the security.mac.portacl.enabledsysctl variable will not work on
&os; 5.2.1 or previous releases.security.mac.portacl.port_high will set
the highest port number that &man.mac.portacl.4;
will enable protection for.security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt will,
when set to a non-zero value, exempt the
root user from this policy.security.mac.portacl.rules will
specify the actual mac_portacl policy; see below.The actual mac_portacl policy, as
specified in the security.mac.portacl.rules
sysctl, is a text string of the form:
rule[,rule,...] with as many rules as
needed. Each rule is of the form:
idtype:id:protocol:port. The
idtype parameter can be
uid or gid and used to
interpret the id parameter as either a
user id or group id, respectively. The
protocol parameter is used to determine if
the rule should apply to TCP or
UDP by setting the parameter to
tcp or udp. The final
port parameter is the port number to allow
the specified user or group to bind to.Since the ruleset is interpreted directly by the kernel
only numeric values can be used for the user ID, group ID, and
port parameters. I.e. user, group, and port service names
cannot be used.By default, on &unix;-like systems, ports fewer than 1024
can only be used by/bound to privileged processes,
i.e. those run as root. For
&man.mac.portacl.4; to allow non-privileged processes to bind
to ports below 1024 this standard &unix; restriction has to be
disabled. This can be accomplished by setting the &man.sysctl.8;
variables net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow and
net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh
to zero.See the examples below or review the &man.mac.portacl.4;
manual page for further information.ExamplesThe following examples should illuminate the above
discussion a little better:&prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.port_high=1023
&prompt.root; sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow=0 net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh=0First we set &man.mac.portacl.4; to cover the standard
privileged ports and disable the normal &unix; bind
restrictions.&prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt=1The root user should not be crippled
by this policy, thus set the
security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt to a
non-zero value. The &man.mac.portacl.4; module
has now been set up to behave the same way &unix;-like systems
behave by default.&prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.rules=uid:80:tcp:80Allow the user with UID 80 (normally
the www user) to bind to port 80.
This can be used to allow the www
user to run a web server without ever having
root privilege.&prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.rules=uid:1001:tcp:110,uid:1001:tcp:995Permit the user with the UID of
1001 to bind to the TCP ports 110
(pop3) and 995 (pop3s).
This will permit this user to start a server that accepts
connections on ports 110 and 995.The MAC partition ModuleMAC Process Partition PolicyModule name: mac_partition.koKernel configuration line:
options MAC_PARTITIONBoot option:
mac_partition_load="YES"The &man.mac.partition.4; policy will drop processes into
specific partitions based on their
MAC label. Think of it as a special
type of &man.jail.8;, though that is hardly a worthy
comparison.This is one module that should be added to the
&man.loader.conf.5; file so that it loads
and enables the policy during the boot process.Most configuration for this policy is done using
the &man.setpmac.8; utility which will be explained below.
The following sysctl tunable is
available for this policy:security.mac.partition.enabled will
enable the enforcement of MAC process
partitions.When this policy is enabled, users will only be permitted
to see their processes, and any others within their partition,
but will not be permitted to work with
utilities outside the scope of this partition. For instance, a user in the
insecure class above will not be permitted
to access the top command as well as many
other commands that must spawn a process.To set or drop utilities into a partition label, use the
setpmac utility:&prompt.root; setpmac partition/13 topThis will add the top command to the
label set on users in the insecure class.
Note that all processes spawned by users
in the insecure class will stay in the
partition/13 label.ExamplesThe following command will show you the partition label
and the process list:&prompt.root; ps ZaxThis next command will allow the viewing of another
user's process partition label and that user's currently
running processes:&prompt.root; ps -ZU trhodesUsers can see processes in root's
label unless the &man.mac.seeotheruids.4; policy is
loaded.A really crafty implementation could have all of the
services disabled in /etc/rc.conf and
started by a script that starts them with the proper
labeling set.The following policies support integer settings
in place of the three default labels offered. These options,
including their limitations, are further explained in
the module manual pages.The MAC Multi-Level Security ModuleMAC Multi-Level Security PolicyModule name: mac_mls.koKernel configuration line:
options MAC_MLSBoot option: mac_mls_load="YES"The &man.mac.mls.4; policy controls access between subjects
and objects in the system by enforcing a strict information
flow policy.In MLS environments, a
clearance level is set in each subject or objects
label, along with compartments. Since these clearance or
sensibility levels can reach numbers greater than six thousand;
it would be a daunting task for any system administrator to
thoroughly configure each subject or object. Thankfully, three
instant labels are already included in this
policy.These labels are mls/low,
mls/equal and mls/high.
Since these labels are described in depth in the manual page,
they will only get a brief description here:The mls/low label contains a low
configuration which permits it to be dominated by all other
objects. Anything labeled with mls/low
will have a low clearance level and not be permitted to access
information of a higher level. In addition, this label will
prevent objects of a higher clearance level from writing or
passing information on to them.The mls/equal label should be
placed on objects considered to be exempt from the
policy.The mls/high label is the highest level
of clearance possible. Objects assigned this label will
hold dominance over all other objects in the system; however,
they will not permit the leaking of information to objects
of a lower class.MLS provides for:A hierarchical security level with a set of non
hierarchical categories;Fixed rules: no read up, no write down (a subject can
have read access to objects on its own level or below, but
not above. Similarly, a subject can have write access to
objects on its own level or above but not beneath.);Secrecy (preventing inappropriate disclosure
of data);Basis for the design of systems that concurrently handle
data at multiple sensitivity levels (without leaking
information between secret and confidential).The following sysctl tunables are
available for the configuration of special services and
interfaces:security.mac.mls.enabled is used to
enable/disable the MLS policy.security.mac.mls.ptys_equal will label
all &man.pty.4; devices as mls/equal during
creation.security.mac.mls.revocation_enabled is
used to revoke access to objects after their label changes
to a label of a lower grade.security.mac.mls.max_compartments is
used to set the maximum number of compartment levels with
objects; basically the maximum compartment number allowed
on a system.To manipulate the MLS labels, the
&man.setfmac.8; command has been provided. To assign a label
to an object, issue the following command:&prompt.root; setfmac mls/5 testTo get the MLS label for the file
test issue the following command:&prompt.root; getfmac testThis is a summary of the MLS
policy's features. Another approach is to create a master policy
file in /etc which
specifies the MLS policy information and to
feed that file into the setfmac command. This
method will be explained after all policies are covered.Planning Mandatory SensitivityWith the Multi-Level Security Policy Module, an
administrator plans for controlling the flow of sensitive
information. By default, with its block read up block write
down nature, the system defaults everything to a low state.
Everything is accessible and an administrator
slowly changes this during the configuration stage; augmenting
the confidentiality of the information.Beyond the three basic label options above, an administrator
may group users and groups as required to block the information
flow between them. It might be easier to look at the
information in clearance levels familiarized with words, for
instance classifications such as
Confidential, Secret,
and Top Secret. Some administrators might
just create different groups based on project levels.
Regardless of classification method, a well thought out plan
must exist before implementing such a restrictive policy.Some example situations for this security policy module
could be an e-commerce web server, a file server holding critical
company information, and financial institution environments.
The most unlikely place would be a personal workstation with
only two or three users.The MAC Biba ModuleMAC Biba Integrity PolicyModule name: mac_biba.koKernel configuration line: options MAC_BIBABoot option: mac_biba_load="YES"The &man.mac.biba.4; module loads the MAC
Biba policy. This policy works much like that of the
MLS policy with the exception that the rules
for information flow
are slightly reversed. This is said to prevent the downward
flow of sensitive information whereas the MLS
policy prevents the upward flow of sensitive information; thus,
much of this section can apply to both policies.In Biba environments, an integrity label is
set on each subject or object. These labels are made up of
hierarchal grades, and non-hierarchal components. As an object's
or subject's grade ascends, so does its integrity.Supported labels are biba/low,
biba/equal, and biba/high;
as explained below:The biba/low label is considered the
lowest integrity an object or subject may have. Setting
this on objects or subjects will block their write access
to objects or subjects marked high. They still have read
access though.The biba/equal label should only be
placed on objects considered to be exempt from the
policy.The biba/high label will permit
writing to objects set at a lower label, but not
permit reading that object. It is recommended that this
label be placed on objects that affect the integrity of
the entire system.Biba provides for:Hierarchical integrity level with a set of non
hierarchical integrity categories;Fixed rules: no write up, no read down (opposite of
MLS). A subject can have write access
to objects on its own level or below, but not above. Similarly, a
subject can have read access to objects on its own level
or above, but not below;Integrity (preventing inappropriate modification of
data);Integrity levels (instead of MLS sensitivity
levels).The following sysctl tunables can
be used to manipulate the Biba policy.security.mac.biba.enabled may be used
to enable/disable enforcement of the Biba policy on the
target machine.security.mac.biba.ptys_equal may be
used to disable the Biba policy on &man.pty.4;
devices.security.mac.biba.revocation_enabled
will force the revocation of access to objects if the label
is changed to dominate the subject.To access the Biba policy setting on system objects, use
the setfmac and getfmac
commands:&prompt.root; setfmac biba/low test
&prompt.root; getfmac test
test: biba/lowPlanning Mandatory IntegrityIntegrity, different from sensitivity, guarantees that the
information will never be manipulated by untrusted parties.
This includes information passed between subjects, objects,
and both. It ensures that users will only be able to modify
and in some cases even access information they explicitly need
to.The &man.mac.biba.4; security policy module permits an
administrator to address which files and programs a user or
users may see and invoke while assuring that the programs and
files are free from threats and trusted by the system for that
user, or group of users.During the initial planning phase, an administrator must be
prepared to partition users into grades, levels, and areas.
Users will be blocked access not only to data but programs
and utilities both before and after they start. The system will
default to a high label once this policy module is enabled, and
it is up to the administrator to configure the different grades
and levels for users. Instead of using clearance levels as
described above, a good planning method could include topics.
For instance, only allow developers modification access to the source code
repository, source code compiler, and other development
utilities. While other users would be grouped into other
categories such as testers, designers, or just ordinary
users and would only be permitted read access.With its natural security control, a lower integrity subject
is unable to write to a higher integrity subject; a higher
integrity subject cannot observe or read a lower integrity
object. Setting a label at the lowest possible grade could make
it inaccessible to subjects. Some prospective environments for
this security policy module would include a constrained web
server, development and test machine, and source code
repository. A less useful implementation would be a personal
workstation, a machine used as a router, or a network
firewall.The MAC LOMAC ModuleMAC LOMACModule name: mac_lomac.koKernel configuration line: options MAC_LOMACBoot option: mac_lomac_load="YES"Unlike the MAC Biba policy, the
&man.mac.lomac.4; policy permits access to lower integrity
objects only after decreasing the integrity level to not disrupt
any integrity rules.The MAC version of the Low-watermark
integrity policy, not to be confused with the older &man.lomac.4;
implementation, works almost identically to Biba, but with the
exception of using floating labels to support subject
demotion via an auxiliary grade compartment. This secondary
compartment takes the form of [auxgrade].
When assigning a lomac policy with an auxiliary grade, it
should look a little bit like: lomac/10[2]
where the number two (2) is the auxiliary grade.The MAC LOMAC policy relies on the
ubiquitous labeling of all system objects with integrity labels,
permitting subjects to read from low integrity objects and then
downgrading the label on the subject to prevent future writes to
high integrity objects. This is the
[auxgrade] option discussed above, thus the
policy may provide for greater compatibility and require less
initial configuration than Biba.ExamplesLike the Biba and MLS policies;
the setfmac and setpmac
utilities may be used to place labels on system objects:&prompt.root; setfmac /usr/home/trhodes lomac/high[low]
&prompt.root; getfmac /usr/home/trhodes lomac/high[low]Notice the auxiliary grade here is low,
this is a feature provided only by the MAC
LOMAC policy.Nagios in a MAC JailNagios in a MAC JailThe following demonstration will implement a secure
environment using various MAC modules
with properly configured policies. This is only a test and
should not be considered the complete answer to everyone's
security woes. Just implementing a policy and ignoring it
never works and could be disastrous in a production
environment.Before beginning this process, the
multilabel option must be set on each file
system as stated at the beginning of this chapter. Not doing
so will result in errors. While at it, ensure that the
net-mngt/nagios-plugins,
net-mngt/nagios, and
www/apache13 ports are all
installed, configured, and working correctly.Create an insecure User ClassBegin the procedure by adding the following user class
to the /etc/login.conf file:insecure:\
:copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\
:welcome=/etc/motd:\
:setenv=MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K:\
:path=~/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin
:manpath=/usr/share/man /usr/local/man:\
:nologin=/usr/sbin/nologin:\
:cputime=1h30m:\
:datasize=8M:\
:vmemoryuse=100M:\
:stacksize=2M:\
:memorylocked=4M:\
:memoryuse=8M:\
:filesize=8M:\
:coredumpsize=8M:\
:openfiles=24:\
:maxproc=32:\
:priority=0:\
:requirehome:\
:passwordtime=91d:\
:umask=022:\
:ignoretime@:\
:label=biba/10(10-10):And adding the following line to the default user
class::label=biba/high:Once this is completed, the following command must be
issued to rebuild the database:&prompt.root; cap_mkdb /etc/login.confBoot ConfigurationDo not reboot yet, just add the following lines to
/boot/loader.conf so the required
modules will load during system initialization:mac_biba_load="YES"
mac_seeotheruids_load="YES"Configure UsersSet the root user to the default
class using:&prompt.root; pw usermod root -L defaultAll user accounts that are not root
or system users will now require a login class. The login
class is required otherwise users will be refused access
to common commands such as &man.vi.1;.
The following sh script should do the
trick:&prompt.root; for x in `awk -F: '($3 >= 1001) && ($3 != 65534) { print $1 }' \/etc/passwd`; do pw usermod $x -L default; done;Drop the nagios and
www users into the insecure class:&prompt.root; pw usermod nagios -L insecure&prompt.root; pw usermod www -L insecureCreate the Contexts FileA contexts file should now be created; the following example
file should be placed in
/etc/policy.contexts.# This is the default BIBA policy for this system.
# System:
/var/run biba/equal
/var/run/* biba/equal
/dev biba/equal
/dev/* biba/equal
/var biba/equal
/var/spool biba/equal
/var/spool/* biba/equal
/var/log biba/equal
/var/log/* biba/equal
/tmp biba/equal
/tmp/* biba/equal
/var/tmp biba/equal
/var/tmp/* biba/equal
/var/spool/mqueue biba/equal
/var/spool/clientmqueue biba/equal
# For Nagios:
/usr/local/etc/nagios
/usr/local/etc/nagios/* biba/10
/var/spool/nagios biba/10
/var/spool/nagios/* biba/10
# For apache
/usr/local/etc/apache biba/10
/usr/local/etc/apache/* biba/10This policy will enforce security by setting restrictions
on the flow of information. In this specific configuration,
users, root and others, should never be
allowed to access Nagios.
Configuration files and processes that are a part of
Nagios will be completely self
contained or jailed.This file may now be read into our system by issuing the
following command:&prompt.root; setfsmac -ef /etc/policy.contexts /
&prompt.root; setfsmac -ef /etc/policy.contexts /The above file system layout may be different depending
on environment; however, it must be run on every single file
system.The /etc/mac.conf file requires
the following modifications in the main section:default_labels file ?biba
default_labels ifnet ?biba
default_labels process ?biba
default_labels socket ?bibaEnable NetworkingAdd the following line to
/boot/loader.conf:security.mac.biba.trust_all_interfaces=1And the following to the network card configuration stored
in rc.conf. If the primary Internet
configuration is done via DHCP, this may
need to be configured manually after every system boot:maclabel biba/equalTesting the ConfigurationMAC Configuration TestingEnsure that the web server and
Nagios will not be started
on system initialization, and reboot. Ensure the
root user cannot access any of the files
in the Nagios configuration
directory. If root can issue an &man.ls.1;
command on /var/spool/nagios, then something
is wrong. Otherwise a permission denied error
should be returned.If all seems well, Nagios,
Apache, and
Sendmail can now be started in a way
fitting of the security policy. The following commands will
make this happen:&prompt.root; cd /etc/mail && make stop && \
setpmac biba/equal make start && setpmac biba/10\(10-10\) apachectl start && \
setpmac biba/10\(10-10\) /usr/local/etc/rc.d/nagios.sh forcestartDouble check to ensure that everything is working
properly. If not, check the log files or error messages. Use
the &man.sysctl.8; utility to disable the &man.mac.biba.4;
security policy module enforcement and try starting everything
again, like normal.The root user can change the security
enforcement and edit the configuration files without fear.
The following command will permit the degradation of the
security policy to a lower grade for a newly spawned
shell:&prompt.root; setpmac biba/10 cshTo block this from happening, force the user into a range
via &man.login.conf.5;. If &man.setpmac.8; attempts to run
a command outside of the compartment's range, an error will
be returned and the command will not be executed. In this
case, setting root to
biba/high(high-high).User Lock DownThis example considers a relatively small, fewer than fifty
users, storage system. Users would have login capabilities, and
be permitted to not only store data but access resources as
well.For this scenario, the &man.mac.bsdextended.4; mixed with
&man.mac.seeotheruids.4; could co-exist and block access not
only to system objects but to hide user processes as well.
Begin by adding the following lines to
/boot/loader.conf:mac_seeotheruids_enabled="YES"The &man.mac.bsdextended.4; security policy module may be
activated through the use of the following rc.conf
variable:ugidfw_enable="YES"Default rules stored in
/etc/rc.bsdextended will be loaded at system
initialization; however, the default entries may need
modification. Since this machine is expected only to service
users, everything may be left commented out except the last
two. These will force the loading of user owned system objects
by default.Add the required users to this machine and reboot. For
testing purposes, try logging in as a different user across two
consoles. Run the ps aux command to see if
processes of other users are visible. Try to run &man.ls.1; on
another users home directory, it should fail.Do not try to test with the root user
unless the specific sysctls have been modified
to block super user access.When a new user is added, their &man.mac.bsdextended.4;
rule will not be in the ruleset list. To update the ruleset
quickly, simply unload the security policy module and reload
it again using the &man.kldunload.8; and &man.kldload.8;
utilities.Troubleshooting the MAC FrameworkMAC TroubleshootingDuring the development stage, a few users reported problems
with normal configuration. Some of these problems
are listed below:The option cannot be enabled on
/The flag does not stay
enabled on my root (/) partition!It seems that one out of every fifty users has this
problem, indeed, we had this problem during our initial
configuration. Further observation of this so called
bug has lead me to believe that it is a
result of either incorrect documentation or misinterpretation
of the documentation. Regardless of why it happened, the
following steps may be taken to resolve it:Edit /etc/fstab and set the root
partition at for read-only.Reboot into single user mode.Run tunefs
on /.Reboot the system into normal mode.Run mount/ and change the
back to in /etc/fstab
and reboot the system again.Double-check the output from the
mount to ensure that
has been properly set on the
root file system.Cannot start a X11 server after MACAfter establishing a secure environment with
MAC, I am no longer able to start
X!This could be caused by the MAC
partition policy or by a mislabeling in
one of the MAC labeling policies. To
debug, try the following:Check the error message; if the user is in the
insecure class, the
partition policy may be the culprit.
Try setting the user's class back to the
default class and rebuild the database
with the cap_mkdb command. If this
does not alleviate the problem, go to step two.Double-check the label policies. Ensure that the
policies are set correctly for the user in question, the
X11 application, and
the /dev
entries.If neither of these resolve the problem, send the
error message and a description of your environment to
the TrustedBSD discussion lists located at the
TrustedBSD
website or to the &a.questions;
mailing list.Error: &man..secure.path.3; cannot stat .login_confWhen I attempt to switch from the root
to another user in the system, the error message
_secure_path: unable to state .login_conf.This message is usually shown when the user has a higher
label setting then that of the user whom they are attempting to
become. For instance a user on the system,
joe, has a default label of
. The root user,
who has a label of , cannot view
joe's home directory. This will happen
regardless if root has used the
su command to become joe,
or not. In this scenario, the Biba integrity model will not
permit root to view objects set at a lower
integrity level.The root username is broken!In normal or even single user mode, the
root is not recognized. The
whoami command returns 0 (zero) and
su returns who are you?.
What could be going on?This can happen if a labeling policy has been disabled,
either by a &man.sysctl.8; or the policy module was unloaded.
If the policy is being disabled or has been temporarily
disabled, then the login capabilities database needs to be
reconfigured with the option being
removed. Double check the login.conf
file to ensure that all options have
been removed and rebuild the database with the
cap_mkdb command.This may also happen if a policy restricts access to the
master.passwd file or database. Usually
caused by an administrator altering the file under a label
which conflicts with the general policy being used by the
system. In these cases, the user information would be read
by the system and access would be blocked as the file has
inherited the new label. Disable the policy via a
&man.sysctl.8; and everything should return to normal.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml
index 5aba6a63cd..1e98829a11 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml
@@ -1,4981 +1,4981 @@
MatthewDillonMuch of this chapter has been taken from the
security(7) manual page by SecuritysecuritySynopsisThis chapter will provide a basic introduction to system security
concepts, some general good rules of thumb, and some advanced topics
under &os;. A lot of the topics covered here can be applied
to system and Internet security in general as well. The Internet
is no longer a friendly place in which everyone
wants to be your kind neighbor. Securing your system is imperative
to protect your data, intellectual property, time, and much more
from the hands of hackers and the like.&os; provides an array of utilities and mechanisms to ensure
the integrity and security of your system and network.After reading this chapter, you will know:Basic system security concepts, in respect to &os;.About the various crypt mechanisms available in &os;,
such as DES and MD5.How to set up one-time password authentication.How to configure TCP Wrappers for use
with inetd.How to set up KerberosIV on &os;
releases prior to 5.0.How to set up Kerberos5 on
&os;.How to configure IPsec and create a VPN between
&os;/&windows; machines.How to configure and use OpenSSH, &os;'s SSH
implementation.What file system ACLs are and how to use them.How to use the Portaudit
utility to audit third party software packages installed
from the Ports Collection.How to utilize the &os; security advisories
publications.Have an idea of what Process Accounting is and how to
enable it on &os;.Before reading this chapter, you should:Understand basic &os; and Internet concepts.Additional security topics are covered throughout this book.
For example, Mandatory Access Control is discussed in and Internet Firewalls are discussed in .IntroductionSecurity is a function that begins and ends with the system
administrator. While all BSD &unix; multi-user systems have some
inherent security, the job of building and maintaining additional
security mechanisms to keep those users honest is
probably one of the single largest undertakings of the sysadmin.
Machines are only as secure as you make them, and security concerns
are ever competing with the human necessity for convenience. &unix;
systems, in general, are capable of running a huge number of
simultaneous processes and many of these processes operate as
servers — meaning that external entities can connect and talk
to them. As yesterday's mini-computers and mainframes become
today's desktops, and as computers become networked and
inter-networked, security becomes an even bigger issue.System security also pertains to dealing with various forms of
attack, including attacks that attempt to crash, or otherwise make a
system unusable, but do not attempt to compromise the
root account (break root).
Security concerns
can be split up into several categories:Denial of service attacks.User account compromises.Root compromise through accessible servers.Root compromise via user accounts.Backdoor creation.DoS attacksDenial of Service (DoS)securityDoS attacksDenial of Service (DoS)Denial of Service (DoS)A denial of service attack is an action that deprives the
machine of needed resources. Typically, DoS attacks are
brute-force mechanisms that attempt to crash or otherwise make a
machine unusable by overwhelming its servers or network stack. Some
DoS attacks try to take advantage of bugs in the networking
stack to crash a machine with a single packet. The latter can only
be fixed by applying a bug fix to the kernel. Attacks on servers
can often be fixed by properly specifying options to limit the load
the servers incur on the system under adverse conditions.
Brute-force network attacks are harder to deal with. A
spoofed-packet attack, for example, is nearly impossible to stop,
short of cutting your system off from the Internet. It may not be
able to take your machine down, but it can saturate your
Internet connection.securityaccount compromisesA user account compromise is even more common than a DoS
attack. Many sysadmins still run standard
telnetd, rlogind,
rshd,
and ftpd servers on their machines.
These servers, by default, do
not operate over encrypted connections. The result is that if you
have any moderate-sized user base, one or more of your users logging
into your system from a remote location (which is the most common
and convenient way to login to a system) will have his or her
password sniffed. The attentive system admin will analyze his
remote access logs looking for suspicious source addresses even for
successful logins.One must always assume that once an attacker has access to a
user account, the attacker can break root.
However, the reality is that in a well secured and maintained system,
access to a user account does not necessarily give the attacker
access to root. The distinction is important
because without access to root the attacker
cannot generally hide his tracks and may, at best, be able to do
nothing more than mess with the user's files, or crash the machine.
User account compromises are very common because users tend not to
take the precautions that sysadmins take.securitybackdoorsSystem administrators must keep in mind that there are
potentially many ways to break root on a machine.
The attacker may know the root password,
the attacker may find a bug in a root-run server and be able
to break root over a network
connection to that server, or the attacker may know of a bug in
a suid-root program that allows the attacker to break
root once he has broken into a user's account.
If an attacker has found a way to break root
on a machine, the attacker may not have a need
to install a backdoor. Many of the root holes
found and closed to date involve a considerable amount of work
by the attacker to cleanup after himself, so most attackers install
backdoors. A backdoor provides the attacker with a way to easily
regain root access to the system, but it
also gives the smart system administrator a convenient way
to detect the intrusion.
Making it impossible for an attacker to install a backdoor may
actually be detrimental to your security, because it will not
close off the hole the attacker found to break in the first
place.Security remedies should always be implemented with a
multi-layered onion peel approach and can be
categorized as follows:Securing root and staff accounts.Securing root–run servers
and suid/sgid binaries.Securing user accounts.Securing the password file.Securing the kernel core, raw devices, and
file systems.Quick detection of inappropriate changes made to the
system.Paranoia.The next section of this chapter will cover the above bullet
items in greater depth.Securing &os;securitysecuring &os;Command vs. ProtocolThroughout this document, we will use
bold text to refer to an
application, and a monospaced font to refer
to specific commands. Protocols will use a normal font. This
typographical distinction is useful for instances such as ssh,
since it is
a protocol as well as command.The sections that follow will cover the methods of securing your
&os; system that were mentioned in the last section of this chapter.Securing the root Account and
Staff AccountssuFirst off, do not bother securing staff accounts if you have
not secured the root account.
Most systems have a password assigned to the root
account. The first thing you do is assume
that the password is always compromised.
This does not mean that you should remove the password. The
password is almost always necessary for console access to the
machine. What it does mean is that you should not make it
possible to use the password outside of the console or possibly
even with the &man.su.1; command. For example, make sure that
your ptys are specified as being insecure in the
/etc/ttys file so that direct
root logins
via telnet or rlogin are
disallowed. If using other login services such as
sshd, make sure that direct
root logins are disabled there as well.
You can do this by editing
your /etc/ssh/sshd_config file, and making
sure that PermitRootLogin is set to
NO. Consider every access method —
services such as FTP often fall through the cracks.
Direct root logins should only be allowed
via the system console.wheelOf course, as a sysadmin you have to be able to get to
root, so we open up a few holes.
But we make sure these holes require additional password
verification to operate. One way to make root
accessible is to add appropriate staff accounts to the
wheel group (in
/etc/group). The staff members placed in the
wheel group are allowed to
su to root.
You should never give staff
members native wheel access by putting them in the
wheel group in their password entry. Staff
accounts should be placed in a staff group, and
then added to the wheel group via the
/etc/group file. Only those staff members
who actually need to have root access
should be placed in the
wheel group. It is also possible, when using
an authentication method such as Kerberos, to use Kerberos'
.k5login file in the root
account to allow a &man.ksu.1; to root
without having to place anyone at all in the
wheel group. This may be the better solution
since the wheel mechanism still allows an
intruder to break root if the intruder
has gotten hold of your
password file and can break into a staff account. While having
the wheel mechanism is better than having
nothing at all, it is not necessarily the safest option.An indirect way to secure staff accounts, and ultimately
root access is to use an alternative
login access method and
do what is known as starring out the encrypted
password for the staff accounts. Using the &man.vipw.8;
command, one can replace each instance of an encrypted password
with a single * character.
This command will update the /etc/master.passwd
file and user/password database to disable password-authenticated
logins.A staff account entry such as:foobar:R9DT/Fa1/LV9U:1000:1000::0:0:Foo Bar:/home/foobar:/usr/local/bin/tcshShould be changed to this:foobar:*:1000:1000::0:0:Foo Bar:/home/foobar:/usr/local/bin/tcshThis change will prevent normal logins from occurring,
since the encrypted password will never match
*. With this done,
staff members must use
another mechanism to authenticate themselves such as
&man.kerberos.1; or &man.ssh.1; using a public/private key
pair. When using something like Kerberos, one generally must
secure the machines which run the Kerberos servers and your
desktop workstation. When using a public/private key pair
with ssh, one must generally secure
the machine used to login from (typically
one's workstation). An additional layer of protection can be
added to the key pair by password protecting the key pair when
creating it with &man.ssh-keygen.1;. Being able to
star out the passwords for staff accounts also
guarantees that staff members can only login through secure
access methods that you have set up. This forces all staff
members to use secure, encrypted connections for all of their
sessions, which closes an important hole used by many
intruders: sniffing the network from an unrelated,
less secure machine.The more indirect security mechanisms also assume that you are
logging in from a more restrictive server to a less restrictive
server. For example, if your main box is running all sorts of
servers, your workstation should not be running any. In order for
your workstation to be reasonably secure you should run as few
servers as possible, up to and including no servers at all, and
you should run a password-protected screen blanker. Of course,
given physical access to a workstation an attacker can break any
sort of security you put on it. This is definitely a problem that
you should consider, but you should also consider the fact that the
vast majority of break-ins occur remotely, over a network, from
people who do not have physical access to your workstation or
servers.KerberosIVUsing something like Kerberos also gives you the ability to
disable or change the password for a staff account in one place,
and have it immediately affect all the machines on which the staff
member may have an account. If a staff member's account gets
compromised, the ability to instantly change his password on all
machines should not be underrated. With discrete passwords,
changing a password on N machines can be a mess. You can also
impose re-passwording restrictions with Kerberos: not only can a
Kerberos ticket be made to timeout after a while, but the Kerberos
system can require that the user choose a new password after a
certain period of time (say, once a month).Securing Root-run Servers and SUID/SGID BinariesntalkcomsatfingersandboxessshdtelnetdrshdrlogindThe prudent sysadmin only runs the servers he needs to, no
more, no less. Be aware that third party servers are often the
most bug-prone. For example, running an old version of
imapd or
popper is like giving a universal
root ticket out to the entire world.
Never run a server that you have not checked out carefully.
Many servers do not need to be run as root.
For example, the ntalk,
comsat, and
finger daemons can be run in special
user sandboxes. A sandbox is not perfect,
unless you go through a large amount of trouble, but the onion
approach to security still stands: If someone is able to break
in through a server running in a sandbox, they still have to
break out of the sandbox. The more layers the attacker must
break through, the lower the likelihood of his success. Root
holes have historically been found in virtually every server
ever run as root, including basic system servers.
If you are running a machine through which people only login via
sshd and never login via
telnetd or
rshd or
rlogind, then turn off those
services!&os; now defaults to running
ntalkd,
comsat, and
finger in a sandbox. Another program
which may be a candidate for running in a sandbox is &man.named.8;.
/etc/defaults/rc.conf includes the arguments
necessary to run named in a sandbox in a
commented-out form. Depending on whether you are installing a new
system or upgrading an existing system, the special user accounts
used by these sandboxes may not be installed. The prudent
sysadmin would research and implement sandboxes for servers
whenever possible.sendmailThere are a number of other servers that typically do not run
in sandboxes: sendmail,
popper,
imapd, ftpd,
and others. There are alternatives to some of these, but
installing them may require more work than you are willing to
perform (the convenience factor strikes again). You may have to
run these servers as root and rely on other
mechanisms to detect break-ins that might occur through them.The other big potential root holes in a
system are the
suid-root and sgid binaries installed on the system. Most of
these binaries, such as rlogin, reside
in /bin, /sbin,
/usr/bin, or /usr/sbin.
While nothing is 100% safe, the system-default suid and sgid
binaries can be considered reasonably safe. Still,
root holes are occasionally found in these
binaries. A root hole was found in
Xlib in 1998 that made
xterm (which is typically suid)
vulnerable. It is better to be safe than sorry and the prudent
sysadmin will restrict suid binaries, that only staff should run,
to a special group that only staff can access, and get rid of
(chmod 000) any suid binaries that nobody uses.
A server with no display generally does not need an
xterm binary. Sgid binaries can be
almost as dangerous. If an intruder can break an sgid-kmem binary,
the intruder might be able to read /dev/kmem
and thus read the encrypted password file, potentially compromising
any passworded account. Alternatively an intruder who breaks
group kmem can monitor keystrokes sent through
ptys, including ptys used by users who login through secure
methods. An intruder that breaks the tty
group can write to
almost any user's tty. If a user is running a terminal program or
emulator with a keyboard-simulation feature, the intruder can
potentially generate a data stream that causes the user's terminal
to echo a command, which is then run as that user.Securing User AccountsUser accounts are usually the most difficult to secure. While
you can impose draconian access restrictions on your staff and
star out their passwords, you may not be able to
do so with any general user accounts you might have. If you do
have sufficient control, then you may win out and be able to secure
the user accounts properly. If not, you simply have to be more
vigilant in your monitoring of those accounts. Use of
ssh and Kerberos for user accounts is
more problematic, due to the extra administration and technical
support required, but still a very good solution compared to a
encrypted password file.Securing the Password FileThe only sure fire way is to star out as many
passwords as you can and use ssh or
Kerberos for access to those accounts. Even though the encrypted
password file (/etc/spwd.db) can only be read
by root, it may be possible for an intruder
to obtain read access to that file even if the attacker cannot
obtain root-write access.Your security scripts should always check for and report
changes to the password file (see the Checking file integrity section
below).Securing the Kernel Core, Raw Devices, and
File systemsIf an attacker breaks root he can do
just about anything, but
there are certain conveniences. For example, most modern kernels
have a packet sniffing device driver built in. Under &os; it
is called the bpf device. An intruder
will commonly attempt to run a packet sniffer on a compromised
machine. You do not need to give the intruder the capability and
most systems do not have the need for the
bpf device compiled in.sysctlBut even if you turn off the bpf
device, you still have
/dev/mem and
/dev/kmem
to worry about. For that matter, the intruder can still write to
raw disk devices. Also, there is another kernel feature called
the module loader, &man.kldload.8;. An enterprising intruder can
use a KLD module to install his own bpf
device, or other sniffing
device, on a running kernel. To avoid these problems you have to
run the kernel at a higher secure level, at least securelevel 1.
The securelevel can be set with a sysctl on
the kern.securelevel variable. Once you have
set the securelevel to 1, write access to raw devices will be
denied and special chflags flags,
such as schg,
will be enforced. You must also ensure that the
schg flag is set on critical startup binaries,
directories, and script files — everything that gets run up
to the point where the securelevel is set. This might be overdoing
it, and upgrading the system is much more difficult when you
operate at a higher secure level. You may compromise and run the
system at a higher secure level but not set the
schg flag for every system file and directory
under the sun. Another possibility is to simply mount
/ and /usr read-only.
It should be noted that being too draconian in what you attempt to
protect may prevent the all-important detection of an
intrusion.Checking File Integrity: Binaries, Configuration Files,
Etc.When it comes right down to it, you can only protect your core
system configuration and control files so much before the
convenience factor rears its ugly head. For example, using
chflags to set the schg bit
on most of the files in / and
/usr is probably counterproductive, because
while it may protect the files, it also closes a detection window.
The last layer of your security onion is perhaps the most
important — detection. The rest of your security is pretty
much useless (or, worse, presents you with a false sense of
security) if you cannot detect potential intrusions. Half the job
of the onion is to slow down the attacker, rather than stop him, in
order to be able to catch him in the act.The best way to detect an intrusion is to look for modified,
missing, or unexpected files. The best way to look for modified
files is from another (often centralized) limited-access system.
Writing your security scripts on the extra-secure limited-access
system makes them mostly invisible to potential attackers, and this
is important. In order to take maximum advantage you generally
have to give the limited-access box significant access to the
other machines in the business, usually either by doing a
read-only NFS export of the other machines to the limited-access
box, or by setting up ssh key-pairs to
allow the limited-access box to ssh to
the other machines. Except for its network traffic, NFS is the
least visible method — allowing you to monitor the
file systems on each client box virtually undetected. If your
limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a
switch, the NFS method is often the better choice. If your
limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a
hub, or through several layers of routing, the NFS method may be
too insecure (network-wise) and using
ssh may be the better choice even with
the audit-trail tracks that ssh
lays.Once you have given a limited-access box at least read access to the
client systems it is supposed to monitor, you must write scripts
to do the actual monitoring. Given an NFS mount, you can write
scripts out of simple system utilities such as &man.find.1; and
&man.md5.1;. It is best to physically md5 the client-box files
at least once a day, and to test control files such as those
found in /etc and
/usr/local/etc even more often. When
mismatches are found, relative to the base md5 information the
limited-access machine knows is valid, it should scream at a
sysadmin to go check it out. A good security script will also
check for inappropriate suid binaries and for new or deleted files
on system partitions such as / and
/usr.When using ssh rather than NFS,
writing the security script is much more difficult. You
essentially have to scp the scripts to the client
box in order to
run them, making them visible, and for safety you also need to
scp the binaries (such as find) that those
scripts use. The ssh client on the
client box may already be compromised. All in all, using
ssh may be necessary when running over
insecure links, but it is also a lot harder to deal with.A good security script will also check for changes to user and
staff members access configuration files:
.rhosts, .shosts,
.ssh/authorized_keys and so forth,
files that might fall outside the purview of the
MD5 check.If you have a huge amount of user disk space, it may take too
long to run through every file on those partitions. In this case,
setting mount flags to disallow suid binaries and devices on those
partitions is a good idea. The nodev and
nosuid options (see &man.mount.8;) are what you
want to look into. You should probably scan them anyway, at least
once a week, since the object of this layer is to detect a break-in
attempt, whether or not the attempt succeeds.Process accounting (see &man.accton.8;) is a relatively
low-overhead feature of the operating system which might help
as a post-break-in evaluation mechanism. It is especially
useful in tracking down how an intruder has actually broken into
a system, assuming the file is still intact after the break-in has
occured.Finally, security scripts should process the log files, and the
logs themselves should be generated in as secure a manner as
possible — remote syslog can be very useful. An intruder
will try to cover his tracks, and log files are critical to the
sysadmin trying to track down the time and method of the initial
break-in. One way to keep a permanent record of the log files is
to run the system console to a serial port and collect the
information to a secure machine monitoring the consoles.ParanoiaA little paranoia never hurts. As a rule, a sysadmin can add
any number of security features, as long as they do not affect
convenience, and can add security features that
do affect convenience with some added thought.
Even more importantly, a security administrator should mix it up a
bit — if you use recommendations such as those given by this
document verbatim, you give away your methodologies to the
prospective attacker who also has access to this document.Denial of Service AttacksDenial of Service (DoS)This section covers Denial of Service attacks. A DoS attack
is typically a packet attack. While there is not much you can do
about modern spoofed packet attacks that saturate your network,
you can generally limit the damage by ensuring that the attacks
cannot take down your servers by:Limiting server forks.Limiting springboard attacks (ICMP response attacks, ping
broadcast, etc.).Overloading the Kernel Route Cache.A common DoS attack scenario is attacking a forking server and
making it spawning so many child processes that the host system
eventually runs out of memory, file descriptors, etc. and then
grinds to a halt. inetd
(see &man.inetd.8;) has several
options to limit this sort of attack. It should be noted that
while it is possible to prevent a machine from going down, it is
not generally possible to prevent a service from being disrupted
by the attack. Read the inetd manual
page carefully and pay
specific attention to the , ,
and options. Note that spoofed-IP attacks
will circumvent the option to
inetd, so
typically a combination of options must be used. Some standalone
servers have self-fork-limitation parameters.Sendmail has its
option, which tends to work
much better than trying to use Sendmail's load limiting options
due to the load lag. You should specify a
MaxDaemonChildren parameter, when you start
sendmail; high enough to handle your
expected load, but not so high that the computer cannot handle that
number of Sendmail instances without falling on
its face. It is also prudent to run Sendmail in queued mode
() and to run the daemon
(sendmail -bd) separate from the queue-runs
(sendmail -q15m). If you still want real-time
delivery you can run the queue at a much lower interval, such as
, but be sure to specify a reasonable
MaxDaemonChildren option for
thatSendmail to prevent cascade failures.Syslogd can be attacked directly
and it is strongly recommended that you use the
option whenever possible, and the option
otherwise.You should also be fairly careful with connect-back services
such as TCP Wrapper's reverse-identd,
which can be attacked directly. You generally do not want to use
the reverse-ident feature of
TCP Wrapper for this reason.It is a very good idea to protect internal services from
external access by firewalling them off at your border routers.
The idea here is to prevent saturation attacks from outside your
LAN, not so much to protect internal services from network-based
root compromise.
Always configure an exclusive firewall, i.e.,
firewall everything except ports A, B,
C, D, and M-Z. This way you can firewall off all of your
low ports except for certain specific services such as
named (if you are primary for a zone),
ntalkd,
sendmail, and other Internet-accessible
services. If you try to configure the firewall the other way
— as an inclusive or permissive firewall, there is a good
chance that you will forget to close a couple of
services, or that you will add a new internal service and forget
to update the firewall. You can still open up the high-numbered
port range on the firewall, to allow permissive-like operation,
without compromising your low ports. Also take note that &os;
allows you to control the range of port numbers used for dynamic
binding, via the various net.inet.ip.portrangesysctl's (sysctl -a | fgrep
portrange), which can also ease the complexity of your
firewall's configuration. For example, you might use a normal
first/last range of 4000 to 5000, and a hiport range of 49152 to
65535, then block off everything under 4000 in your firewall
(except for certain specific Internet-accessible ports, of
course).Another common DoS attack is called a springboard attack
— to attack a server in a manner that causes the server to
generate responses which overloads the server, the local
network, or some other machine. The most common attack of this
nature is the ICMP ping broadcast attack.
The attacker spoofs ping packets sent to your LAN's broadcast
address with the source IP address set to the actual machine they
wish to attack. If your border routers are not configured to
stomp on ping packets to broadcast addresses, your LAN winds up
generating sufficient responses to the spoofed source address to
saturate the victim, especially when the attacker uses the same
trick on several dozen broadcast addresses over several dozen
different networks at once. Broadcast attacks of over a hundred
and twenty megabits have been measured. A second common
springboard attack is against the ICMP error reporting system.
By constructing packets that generate ICMP error responses, an
attacker can saturate a server's incoming network and cause the
server to saturate its outgoing network with ICMP responses. This
type of attack can also crash the server by running it out of
memory, especially if the server cannot drain the ICMP responses
it generates fast enough.
Use the sysctl
variable net.inet.icmp.icmplim to limit these attacks.
The last major class of springboard
attacks is related to certain internal
inetd services such as the
udp echo service. An attacker simply spoofs a UDP packet with the
source address being server A's echo port, and the destination
address being server B's echo port, where server A and B are both
on your LAN. The two servers then bounce this one packet back and
forth between each other. The attacker can overload both servers
and their LANs simply by injecting a few packets in this manner.
Similar problems exist with the internal
chargen port. A
competent sysadmin will turn off all of these inetd-internal test
services.Spoofed packet attacks may also be used to overload the kernel
route cache. Refer to the net.inet.ip.rtexpire,
rtminexpire, and rtmaxcachesysctl parameters. A spoofed packet attack
that uses a random source IP will cause the kernel to generate a
temporary cached route in the route table, viewable with
netstat -rna | fgrep W3. These routes
typically timeout in 1600 seconds or so. If the kernel detects
that the cached route table has gotten too big it will dynamically
reduce the rtexpire but will never decrease it
to less than rtminexpire. There are two
problems:The kernel does not react quickly enough when a lightly
loaded server is suddenly attacked.The rtminexpire is not low enough for
the kernel to survive a sustained attack.If your servers are connected to the Internet via a T3 or
better, it may be prudent to manually override both
rtexpire and rtminexpire
via &man.sysctl.8;. Never set either parameter to zero (unless
you want to crash the machine). Setting both
parameters to 2 seconds should be sufficient to protect the route
table from attack.Access Issues with Kerberos and SSHsshKerberosIVThere are a few issues with both Kerberos and
ssh that need to be addressed if
you intend to use them. Kerberos 5 is an excellent
authentication protocol, but there are bugs in the kerberized
telnet and
rlogin applications that make them
unsuitable for dealing with binary streams. Also, by default
Kerberos does not encrypt a session unless you use the
option. ssh
encrypts everything by default.Ssh works quite well in every
respect except that it forwards encryption keys by default. What
this means is that if you have a secure workstation holding keys
that give you access to the rest of the system, and you
ssh to an insecure machine, your keys
are usable. The actual keys themselves are not exposed, but
ssh installs a forwarding port for the
duration of your login, and if an attacker has broken
root on the
insecure machine he can utilize that port to use your keys to gain
access to any other machine that your keys unlock.We recommend that you use ssh in
combination with Kerberos whenever possible for staff logins.
Ssh can be compiled with Kerberos
support. This reduces your reliance on potentially exposed
ssh keys while at the same time
protecting passwords via Kerberos. Ssh
keys should only be used for automated tasks from secure machines
(something that Kerberos is unsuited to do). We also recommend that
you either turn off key-forwarding in the
ssh configuration, or that you make use
of the from=IP/DOMAIN option that
ssh allows in its
authorized_keys file to make the key only
usable to entities logging in from specific machines.BillSwingleParts rewritten and updated by DES, MD5, and CryptsecuritycryptcryptDESMD5Every user on a &unix; system has a password associated with
their account. It seems obvious that these passwords need to be
known only to the user and the actual operating system. In
order to keep these passwords secret, they are encrypted with
what is known as a one-way hash, that is, they can
only be easily encrypted but not decrypted. In other words, what
we told you a moment ago was obvious is not even true: the
operating system itself does not really know
the password. It only knows the encrypted
form of the password. The only way to get the
plain-text password is by a brute force search of the
space of possible passwords.Unfortunately the only secure way to encrypt passwords when
&unix; came into being was based on DES, the Data Encryption
Standard. This was not such a problem for users resident in
the US, but since the source code for DES could not be exported
outside the US, &os; had to find a way to both comply with
US law and retain compatibility with all the other &unix;
variants that still used DES.The solution was to divide up the encryption libraries
so that US users could install the DES libraries and use
DES but international users still had an encryption method
that could be exported abroad. This is how &os; came to
use MD5 as its default encryption method. MD5 is believed to
be more secure than DES, so installing DES is offered primarily
for compatibility reasons.Recognizing Your Crypt MechanismCurrently the library supports DES, MD5 and Blowfish hash
functions. By default &os; uses MD5 to encrypt
passwords.It is pretty easy to identify which encryption method
&os; is set up to use. Examining the encrypted passwords in
the /etc/master.passwd file is one way.
Passwords encrypted with the MD5 hash are longer than those
encrypted with the DES hash and also begin with the characters
$1$. Passwords starting with
$2a$ are encrypted with the
Blowfish hash function. DES password strings do not
have any particular identifying characteristics, but they are
shorter than MD5 passwords, and are coded in a 64-character
alphabet which does not include the $
character, so a relatively short string which does not begin with
a dollar sign is very likely a DES password.The password format used for new passwords is controlled
by the passwd_format login capability in
/etc/login.conf, which takes values of
des, md5 or
blf. See the &man.login.conf.5; manual page
for more information about login capabilities.One-time Passwordsone-time passwordssecurityone-time passwordsBy default, &os; includes support for OPIE (One-time Passwords
In Everything), which uses the MD5 hash by default.There are three different sorts of passwords which we will discuss
below. The first is your usual &unix; style or
Kerberos password; we will call this a &unix; password.
The second sort is the one-time password which is generated by the OPIE
&man.opiekey.1; program and accepted by the
&man.opiepasswd.1; program
and the login prompt; we will
call this a one-time password. The final sort of
password is the secret password which you give to the
opiekey program (and
sometimes the
opiepasswd programs)
which it uses to generate
one-time passwords; we will call it a secret password
or just unqualified password.The secret password does not have anything to do with your &unix;
password; they can be the same but this is not recommended.
OPIE secret passwords are not limited to 8 characters like old
&unix; passwordsUnder &os; the standard login
password may be up to 128 characters in length.,
they can be as long as you like. Passwords of six or
seven word long phrases are fairly common. For the most part, the
OPIE system operates completely independently of the &unix;
password system.Besides the password, there are two other pieces of data that
are important to OPIE. One is what is known as the
seed or key, consisting of two letters
and five digits. The other is what is called the iteration
count, a number between 1 and 100. OPIE creates the
one-time password by concatenating the seed and the secret password,
then applying the MD5 hash as many times as specified by the
iteration count and turning the result into six short English words.
These six English words are your one-time password. The
authentication system (primarily PAM) keeps
track of the last one-time password used, and the user is
authenticated if the hash of the user-provided password is equal to
the previous password. Because a one-way hash is used it is
impossible to generate future one-time passwords if a successfully
used password is captured; the iteration count is decremented after
each successful login to keep the user and the login program in
sync. When the iteration count gets down to 1, OPIE must be
reinitialized.There are a few programs involved in each system
which we will discuss below. The
opiekey program accepts an iteration
count, a seed, and a secret password, and generates a one-time
password or a consecutive list of one-time passwords. The
opiepasswd
program is used to initialize OPIE,
and to change passwords, iteration counts, or seeds; it
takes either a secret passphrase, or an iteration count,
seed, and a one-time password. The
opieinfo program will examine the
relevant credentials files
(/etc/opiekeys) and print out the invoking user's
current iteration count and seed.There are four different sorts of operations we will cover. The
first is using
opiepasswd over a secure connection to set up
one-time-passwords for the first time, or to change your password
or seed. The second operation is using
opiepasswd over an insecure connection, in
conjunction with opiekey
over a secure connection, to do the same. The third is using
opiekey to log in over
an insecure connection. The fourth is using
opiekey to generate a number of keys which
can be written down or printed out to carry with you when going to
some location without secure connections to anywhere.Secure Connection InitializationTo initialize OPIE for the first time, execute the
opiepasswd command:&prompt.user; opiepasswd -c
[grimreaper] ~ $ opiepasswd -f -c
Adding unfurl:
Only use this method from the console; NEVER from remote. If you are using
telnet, xterm, or a dial-in, type ^C now or exit with no password.
Then run opiepasswd without the -c parameter.
Using MD5 to compute responses.
Enter new secret pass phrase:
Again new secret pass phrase:
ID unfurl OTP key is 499 to4268
MOS MALL GOAT ARM AVID COED
At the Enter new secret pass phrase: or
Enter secret password: prompts, you
should enter a password or phrase. Remember, this is not the
password that you will use to login with, this is used to generate
your one-time login keys. The ID line gives the
parameters of your particular instance: your login name, the
iteration count, and seed. When logging in the system
will remember these parameters and present them back to you so you
do not have to remember them. The last line gives the particular
one-time password which corresponds to those parameters and your
secret password; if you were to re-login immediately, this
one-time password is the one you would use.Insecure Connection InitializationTo initialize or change your secret password over an
insecure connection, you will need to already have a secure
connection to some place where you can run
opiekey; this might be in the form of a shell
prompt on a machine you
trust. You will also need to make up an iteration count (100 is
probably a good value), and you may make up your own seed or use a
randomly-generated one. Over on the insecure connection (to the
machine you are initializing), use opiepasswd:&prompt.user; opiepasswd
Updating unfurl:
You need the response from an OTP generator.
Old secret pass phrase:
otp-md5 498 to4268 ext
Response: GAME GAG WELT OUT DOWN CHAT
New secret pass phrase:
otp-md5 499 to4269
Response: LINE PAP MILK NELL BUOY TROY
ID mark OTP key is 499 gr4269
LINE PAP MILK NELL BUOY TROY
To accept the default seed press Return.
Then before entering an
access password, move over to your secure connection and give it
the same parameters:&prompt.user; opiekey 498 to4268
Using the MD5 algorithm to compute response.
Reminder: Don't use opiekey from telnet or dial-in sessions.
Enter secret pass phrase:
GAME GAG WELT OUT DOWN CHAT
Now switch back over to the insecure connection, and copy the
one-time password generated over to the relevant program.Generating a Single One-time PasswordOnce you have initialized OPIE and login, you will be
presented with a prompt like this:&prompt.user; telnet example.com
Trying 10.0.0.1...
Connected to example.com
Escape character is '^]'.
FreeBSD/i386 (example.com) (ttypa)
login: <username>
otp-md5 498 gr4269 ext
Password: As a side note, the OPIE prompts have a useful feature
(not shown here): if you press Return
at the password prompt, the
prompter will turn echo on, so you can see what you are
typing. This can be extremely useful if you are attempting to
type in a password by hand, such as from a printout.MS-DOSWindowsMacOSAt this point you need to generate your one-time password to
answer this login prompt. This must be done on a trusted system
that you can run
opiekey on. (There are versions of these for DOS,
&windows; and &macos; as well.) They need the iteration count and
the seed as command line options. You can cut-and-paste these
right from the login prompt on the machine that you are logging
in to.On the trusted system:&prompt.user; opiekey 498 to4268
Using the MD5 algorithm to compute response.
Reminder: Don't use opiekey from telnet or dial-in sessions.
Enter secret pass phrase:
GAME GAG WELT OUT DOWN CHATNow that you have your one-time password you can continue
logging in.Generating Multiple One-time PasswordsSometimes you have to go places where you do not have
access to a trusted machine or secure connection. In this case,
it is possible to use the
opiekey command to
generate a number of one-time passwords beforehand to be printed
out and taken with you. For example:&prompt.user; opiekey -n 5 30 zz99999
Using the MD5 algorithm to compute response.
Reminder: Don't use opiekey from telnet or dial-in sessions.
Enter secret pass phrase: <secret password>
26: JOAN BORE FOSS DES NAY QUIT
27: LATE BIAS SLAY FOLK MUCH TRIG
28: SALT TIN ANTI LOON NEAL USE
29: RIO ODIN GO BYE FURY TIC
30: GREW JIVE SAN GIRD BOIL PHIThe requests five keys in sequence, the
specifies what the last iteration number
should be. Note that these are printed out in
reverse order of eventual use. If you are
really paranoid, you might want to write the results down by hand;
otherwise you can cut-and-paste into lpr. Note
that each line shows both the iteration count and the one-time
password; you may still find it handy to scratch off passwords as
you use them.Restricting Use of &unix; PasswordsOPIE can restrict the use of &unix; passwords based on the IP
address of a login session. The relevant file
is /etc/opieaccess, which is present by default.
Please check &man.opieaccess.5;
for more information on this file and which security considerations
you should be aware of when using it.Here is a sample opieaccess file:permit 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0This line allows users whose IP source address (which is
vulnerable to spoofing) matches the specified value and mask,
to use &unix; passwords at any time.If no rules in opieaccess are matched,
the default is to deny non-OPIE logins.TomRhodesWritten by: TCP WrappersTCP WrappersAnyone familiar with &man.inetd.8; has probably heard
of TCP Wrappers at some point. But few
individuals seem to fully comprehend its usefulness in a
network environment. It seems that everyone wants to
install a firewall to handle network connections. While a
firewall has a wide variety of uses, there are some things
that a firewall not handle such as sending text back to the
connection originator. The TCP software
does this and much more. In the next few sections many of
the TCP Wrappers features will be discussed,
and, when applicable, example configuration lines will be
provided.The TCP Wrappers software extends the
abilities of inetd to provide support for
every server daemon under its control. Using this method it
is possible to provide logging support, return messages to
connections, permit a daemon to only accept internal connections,
etc. While some of these features can be provided by implementing
a firewall, this will add not only an extra layer of protection
but go beyond the amount of control a firewall can
provide.The added functionality of TCP Wrappers
should not be considered a replacement for a good firewall.
TCP Wrappers can be used in conjunction
with a firewall or other security enhancements though and
it can serve nicely as an extra layer of protection
for the system.Since this is an extension to the configuration of
inetd, the reader is expected have
read the inetd configuration
section.While programs run by &man.inetd.8; are not exactly
daemons, they have traditionally been called
daemons. This is the term we will use in this section too.Initial ConfigurationThe only requirement of using TCP
Wrappers in &os; is to ensure the inetd
server is started from rc.conf with the
option; this is the default setting. Of
course, proper configuration of
/etc/hosts.allow is also expected, but
&man.syslogd.8; will throw messages in the system logs in
these cases.Unlike other implementations of TCP
Wrappers, the use of hosts.deny has
been deprecated. All configuration options should be placed
in /etc/hosts.allow.In the simplest configuration, daemon connection policies
are set to either be permitted or blocked depending on the
options in /etc/hosts.allow. The default
configuration in &os; is to allow a connection to every daemon
started with inetd. Changing this will be
discussed only after the basic configuration is covered.Basic configuration usually takes the form of
daemon : address : action. Where
daemon is the daemon name which
inetd started. The
address can be a valid hostname, an
IP address or an IPv6 address enclosed in
brackets ([ ]). The action field can be either allow
or deny to grant or deny access appropriately. Keep in mind
that configuration works off a first rule match semantic,
meaning that the configuration file is scanned in ascending
order for a matching rule. When a match is found the rule
is applied and the search process will halt.Several other options exist but they will be explained
in a later section. A simple configuration line may easily be
constructed from that information alone. For example, to
allow POP3 connections via the
mail/qpopper daemon,
the following lines should be appended to
hosts.allow:# This line is required for POP3 connections:
qpopper : ALL : allowAfter adding this line, inetd will need
restarted. This can be accomplished by use of the &man.kill.1;
command, or with the restart parameter
with /etc/rc.d/inetd.Advanced ConfigurationTCP Wrappers has advanced
options too; they will allow for more control over the
way connections are handled. In some cases it may be
a good idea to return a comment to certain hosts or
daemon connections. In other cases, perhaps a log file
should be recorded or an email sent to the administrator.
Other situations may require the use of a service for local
connections only. This is all possible through the use of
configuration options known as wildcards,
expansion characters and external command execution. The
next two sections are written to cover these situations.External CommandsSuppose that a situation occurs where a connection
should be denied yet a reason should be sent to the
individual who attempted to establish that connection. How
could it be done? That action can be made possible by
using the option. When a connection
attempt is made, will be called to
execute a shell command or script. An example already exists
in the hosts.allow file:# The rest of the daemons are protected.
ALL : ALL \
: severity auth.info \
: twist /bin/echo "You are not welcome to use %d from %h."This example shows that the message,
You are not allowed to use daemon
from hostname. will be returned
for any daemon not previously configured in the access file.
This is extremely useful for sending a reply back to the
connection initiator right after the established connection
is dropped. Note that any message returned
must be wrapped in quote
" characters; there are no exceptions to
this rule.It may be possible to launch a denial of service attack
on the server if an attacker, or group of attackers could
flood these daemons with connection requests.Another possibility is to use the
option in these cases. Like , the
implicitly denies the connection and
may be used to run external shell commands or scripts.
Unlike , will
not send a reply back to the individual who established the
connection. For an example, consider the following
configuration line:# We do not allow connections from example.com:
ALL : .example.com \
: spawn (/bin/echo %a from %h attempted to access %d >> \
/var/log/connections.log) \
: denyThis will deny all connection attempts from the
*.example.com domain;
simultaneously logging the hostname, IP
address and the daemon which they attempted to access in the
/var/log/connections.log file.Aside from the already explained substitution characters
above, e.g. %a, a few others exist. See the
&man.hosts.access.5; manual page for the complete list.Wildcard OptionsThus far the ALL example has been used
continuously throughout the examples. Other options exist
which could extend the functionality a bit further. For
instance, ALL may be used to match every
instance of either a daemon, domain or an
IP address. Another wildcard available is
PARANOID which may be used to match any
host which provides an IP address that may
be forged. In other words, paranoid may
be used to define an action to be taken whenever a connection
is made from an IP address that differs
from its hostname. The following example may shed some more
light on this discussion:# Block possibly spoofed requests to sendmail:
sendmail : PARANOID : denyIn that example all connection requests to
sendmail which have an
IP address that varies from its hostname
will be denied.Using the PARANOID may severely
cripple servers if the client or server has a broken
DNS setup. Administrator discretion
is advised.To learn more about wildcards and their associated
functionality, see the &man.hosts.access.5; manual
page.Before any of the specific configuration lines above will
work, the first configuration line should be commented out
in hosts.allow. This was noted at the
beginning of this section.MarkMurrayContributed by MarkDapozBased on a contribution by KerberosIVKerberos is a network add-on system/protocol that allows users to
authenticate themselves through the services of a secure server.
Services such as remote login, remote copy, secure inter-system file
copying and other high-risk tasks are made considerably safer and more
controllable.The following instructions can be used as a guide on how to set up
Kerberos as distributed for &os;. However, you should refer to the
relevant manual pages for a complete description.Installing KerberosIVMITKerberosIVinstallingKerberos is an optional component of &os;. The easiest
way to install this software is by selecting the krb4 or
krb5 distribution in sysinstall
during the initial installation of &os;. This will install
the eBones (KerberosIV) or Heimdal (Kerberos5)
implementation of Kerberos. These implementations are
included because they are developed outside the USA/Canada and
were thus available to system owners outside those countries
during the era of restrictive export controls on cryptographic
code from the USA.Alternatively, the MIT implementation of Kerberos is
available from the Ports Collection as
security/krb5.Creating the Initial DatabaseThis is done on the Kerberos server only. First make sure that
you do not have any old Kerberos databases around. You should change
to the directory /etc/kerberosIV and check that
only the following files are present:&prompt.root; cd /etc/kerberosIV
&prompt.root; ls
README krb.conf krb.realmsIf any additional files (such as principal.*
or master_key) exist, then use the
kdb_destroy command to destroy the old Kerberos
database, or if Kerberos is not running, simply delete the extra
files.You should now edit the krb.conf and
krb.realms files to define your Kerberos realm.
In this case the realm will be EXAMPLE.COM and the
server is grunt.example.com. We edit
or create the krb.conf file:&prompt.root; cat krb.conf
EXAMPLE.COM
EXAMPLE.COM grunt.example.com admin server
CS.BERKELEY.EDU okeeffe.berkeley.edu
ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos.mit.edu
ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-1.mit.edu
ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-2.mit.edu
ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-3.mit.edu
LCS.MIT.EDU kerberos.lcs.mit.edu
TELECOM.MIT.EDU bitsy.mit.edu
ARC.NASA.GOV trident.arc.nasa.govIn this case, the other realms do not need to be there. They are
here as an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple
realms. You may wish to not include them for simplicity.The first line names the realm in which this system works. The
other lines contain realm/host entries. The first item on a line is a
realm, and the second is a host in that realm that is acting as a
key distribution center. The words admin
server following a host's name means that host also
provides an administrative database server. For further explanation
of these terms, please consult the Kerberos manual pages.Now we have to add grunt.example.com
to the EXAMPLE.COM realm and also add an entry to
put all hosts in the .example.com
domain in the EXAMPLE.COM realm. The
krb.realms file would be updated as
follows:&prompt.root; cat krb.realms
grunt.example.com EXAMPLE.COM
.example.com EXAMPLE.COM
.berkeley.edu CS.BERKELEY.EDU
.MIT.EDU ATHENA.MIT.EDU
.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDUAgain, the other realms do not need to be there. They are here as
an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple realms. You
may wish to remove them to simplify things.The first line puts the specific system into
the named realm. The rest of the lines show how to default systems of
a particular subdomain to a named realm.Now we are ready to create the database. This only needs to run
on the Kerberos server (or Key Distribution Center). Issue the
kdb_init command to do this:&prompt.root; kdb_initRealm name [default ATHENA.MIT.EDU ]:EXAMPLE.COM
You will be prompted for the database Master Password.
It is important that you NOT FORGET this password.
Enter Kerberos master key:Now we have to save the key so that servers on the local machine
can pick it up. Use the kstash command to do
this:&prompt.root; kstashEnter Kerberos master key:
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!This saves the encrypted master password in
/etc/kerberosIV/master_key.Making It All RunKerberosIVinitial startupTwo principals need to be added to the database for
each system that will be secured with Kerberos.
Their names are kpasswd and rcmd.
These two principals are made for each system, with the instance being
the name of the individual system.These daemons, kpasswd and
rcmd allow other systems to change Kerberos
passwords and run commands like &man.rcp.1;,
&man.rlogin.1; and &man.rsh.1;.Now let us add these entries:&prompt.root; kdb_edit
Opening database...
Enter Kerberos master key:
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!
Previous or default values are in [brackets] ,
enter return to leave the same, or new value.
Principal name:passwdInstance:grunt
<Not found>, Create [y] ?y
Principal: passwd, Instance: grunt, kdc_key_ver: 1
New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here
Verifying password
New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here
Random password [y] ?y
Principal's new key version = 1
Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ?Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ?Attributes [ 0 ] ?
Edit O.K.
Principal name:rcmdInstance:grunt
<Not found>, Create [y] ?
Principal: rcmd, Instance: grunt, kdc_key_ver: 1
New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here
Verifying password
New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here
Random password [y] ?
Principal's new key version = 1
Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ?Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ?Attributes [ 0 ] ?
Edit O.K.
Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exitCreating the Server FileWe now have to extract all the instances which define the
services on each machine. For this we use the
ext_srvtab command. This will create a file
which must be copied or moved by secure
means to each Kerberos client's
/etc directory. This file must
be present on each server and client, and is crucial to the
operation of Kerberos.&prompt.root; ext_srvtab gruntEnter Kerberos master key:
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!
Generating 'grunt-new-srvtab'....Now, this command only generates a temporary file which must be
renamed to srvtab so that all the servers can pick
it up. Use the &man.mv.1; command to move it into place on
the original system:&prompt.root; mv grunt-new-srvtab srvtabIf the file is for a client system, and the network is not deemed
safe, then copy the
client-new-srvtab to
removable media and transport it by secure physical means. Be sure to
rename it to srvtab in the client's
/etc directory, and make sure it is
mode 600:&prompt.root; mv grumble-new-srvtab srvtab
&prompt.root; chmod 600 srvtabPopulating the DatabaseWe now have to add some user entries into the database. First
let us create an entry for the user jane. Use the
kdb_edit command to do this:&prompt.root; kdb_edit
Opening database...
Enter Kerberos master key:
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!
Previous or default values are in [brackets] ,
enter return to leave the same, or new value.
Principal name:janeInstance:
<Not found>, Create [y] ?y
Principal: jane, Instance: , kdc_key_ver: 1
New Password: <---- enter a secure password here
Verifying password
New Password: <---- re-enter the password here
Principal's new key version = 1
Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ?Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ?Attributes [ 0 ] ?
Edit O.K.
Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exitTesting It All OutFirst we have to start the Kerberos daemons. Note that if you
have correctly edited your /etc/rc.conf then this
will happen automatically when you reboot. This is only necessary on
the Kerberos server. Kerberos clients will automatically get what
they need from the /etc/kerberosIV
directory.&prompt.root; kerberos &
Kerberos server starting
Sleep forever on error
Log file is /var/log/kerberos.log
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!
Current Kerberos master key version is 1
Local realm: EXAMPLE.COM
&prompt.root; kadmind -n &
KADM Server KADM0.0A initializing
Please do not use 'kill -9' to kill this job, use a
regular kill instead
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!Now we can try using the kinit command to get a
ticket for the ID jane that we created
above:&prompt.user; kinit jane
MIT Project Athena (grunt.example.com)
Kerberos Initialization for "jane"
Password:Try listing the tokens using klist to see if we
really have them:&prompt.user; klist
Ticket file: /tmp/tkt245
Principal: jane@EXAMPLE.COM
Issued Expires Principal
Apr 30 11:23:22 Apr 30 19:23:22 krbtgt.EXAMPLE.COM@EXAMPLE.COMNow try changing the password using &man.passwd.1; to
check if the kpasswd daemon can get
authorization to the Kerberos database:&prompt.user; passwd
realm EXAMPLE.COM
Old password for jane:New Password for jane:
Verifying password
New Password for jane:
Password changed.Adding su PrivilegesKerberos allows us to give each user
who needs root privileges their own
separate &man.su.1; password.
We could now add an ID which is authorized to
&man.su.1; to root. This is
controlled by having an instance of root
associated with a principal. Using kdb_edit
we can create the entry jane.root in the
Kerberos database:&prompt.root; kdb_edit
Opening database...
Enter Kerberos master key:
Current Kerberos master key version is 1.
Master key entered. BEWARE!
Previous or default values are in [brackets] ,
enter return to leave the same, or new value.
Principal name:janeInstance:root
<Not found>, Create [y] ? y
Principal: jane, Instance: root, kdc_key_ver: 1
New Password: <---- enter a SECURE password here
Verifying password
New Password: <---- re-enter the password here
Principal's new key version = 1
Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ?Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ?12 <--- Keep this short!
Attributes [ 0 ] ?
Edit O.K.
Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exitNow try getting tokens for it to make sure it works:&prompt.root; kinit jane.root
MIT Project Athena (grunt.example.com)
Kerberos Initialization for "jane.root"
Password:Now we need to add the user to root's
.klogin file:&prompt.root; cat /root/.klogin
jane.root@EXAMPLE.COMNow try doing the &man.su.1;:&prompt.user; suPassword:and take a look at what tokens we have:&prompt.root; klist
Ticket file: /tmp/tkt_root_245
Principal: jane.root@EXAMPLE.COM
Issued Expires Principal
May 2 20:43:12 May 3 04:43:12 krbtgt.EXAMPLE.COM@EXAMPLE.COMUsing Other CommandsIn an earlier example, we created a principal called
jane with an instance root.
This was based on a user with the same name as the principal, and this
is a Kerberos default; that a
<principal>.<instance> of the form
<username>.root will allow
that <username> to &man.su.1; to
root if the necessary entries are in the
.klogin file in root's
home directory:&prompt.root; cat /root/.klogin
jane.root@EXAMPLE.COMLikewise, if a user has in their own home directory lines of the
form:&prompt.user; cat ~/.klogin
jane@EXAMPLE.COM
jack@EXAMPLE.COMThis allows anyone in the EXAMPLE.COM realm
who has authenticated themselves as jane or
jack (via kinit, see above)
to access to jane's
account or files on this system (grunt) via
&man.rlogin.1;, &man.rsh.1; or
&man.rcp.1;.For example, jane now logs into another system using
Kerberos:&prompt.user; kinit
MIT Project Athena (grunt.example.com)
Password:
&prompt.user; rlogin grunt
Last login: Mon May 1 21:14:47 from grumble
Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD BUILT-19950429 (GR386) #0: Sat Apr 29 17:50:09 SAT 1995Or jack logs into jane's account on the same machine
(jane having
set up the .klogin file as above, and the person
in charge of Kerberos having set up principal
jack with a null instance):&prompt.user; kinit
&prompt.user; rlogin grunt -l jane
MIT Project Athena (grunt.example.com)
Password:
Last login: Mon May 1 21:16:55 from grumble
Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD BUILT-19950429 (GR386) #0: Sat Apr 29 17:50:09 SAT 1995TillmanHodgsonContributed by MarkMurrayBased on a contribution by Kerberos5Every &os; release beyond &os;-5.1 includes support
only for Kerberos5. Hence
Kerberos5 is the only version
included, and its configuration is similar in many aspects
to that of KerberosIV. The following
information only applies to
Kerberos5 in post &os;-5.0
releases. Users who wish to use the
KerberosIV package may install the
security/krb4 port.Kerberos is a network add-on
system/protocol that allows users to authenticate themselves
through the services of a secure server. Services such as remote
login, remote copy, secure inter-system file copying and other
high-risk tasks are made considerably safer and more
controllable.Kerberos can be described as an
identity-verifying proxy system. It can also be described as a
trusted third-party authentication system.
Kerberos provides only one
function — the secure authentication of users on the network.
It does not provide authorization functions (what users are
allowed to do) or auditing functions (what those users did).
After a client and server have used
Kerberos to prove their identity, they
can also encrypt all of their communications to assure privacy
and data integrity as they go about their business.Therefore it is highly recommended that
Kerberos be used with other security
methods which provide authorization and audit services.The following instructions can be used as a guide on how to set
up Kerberos as distributed for &os;.
However, you should refer to the relevant manual pages for a complete
description.For purposes of demonstrating a Kerberos
installation, the various name spaces will be handled as follows:The DNS domain (zone)
will be example.org.The Kerberos realm will be
EXAMPLE.ORG.Please use real domain names when setting up
Kerberos even if you intend to run
it internally. This avoids DNS problems
and assures inter-operation with other
Kerberos realms.HistoryKerberos5historyKerberos was created by
MIT as a solution to network security problems.
The Kerberos protocol uses strong
cryptography so that a client can prove its identity to a server
(and vice versa) across an insecure network connection.Kerberos is both the name of a
network authentication protocol and an adjective to describe
programs that implement the program
(Kerberos telnet, for example). The
current version of the protocol is version 5, described in
RFC 1510.Several free implementations of this protocol are available,
covering a wide range of operating systems. The Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), where
Kerberos was originally developed,
continues to develop their Kerberos
package. It is commonly used in the US
as a cryptography product, as such it
has historically been affected by US export
regulations. The MIT
Kerberos is available as a port
(security/krb5). Heimdal
Kerberos is another version 5
implementation, and was explicitly developed outside of the
US to avoid export
regulations (and is thus often included in non-commercial &unix;
variants). The Heimdal Kerberos
distribution is available as a port
(security/heimdal), and a
minimal installation of it is included in the base &os;
install.In order to reach the widest audience, these instructions assume
the use of the Heimdal distribution included in &os;.Setting up a Heimdal KDCKerberos5Key Distribution CenterThe Key Distribution Center (KDC) is the
centralized authentication service that
Kerberos provides — it is the
computer that issues Kerberos tickets.
The KDC is considered trusted by
all other computers in the Kerberos
realm, and thus has heightened security concerns.Note that while running the Kerberos
server requires very few computing resources, a dedicated machine
acting only as a KDC is recommended for security
reasons.To begin setting up a KDC, ensure that your
/etc/rc.conf file contains the correct
settings to act as a KDC (you may need to adjust
paths to reflect your own system):kerberos5_server_enable="YES"
kadmind5_server_enable="YES"Next we will set up your Kerberos
config file, /etc/krb5.conf:[libdefaults]
default_realm = EXAMPLE.ORG
[realms]
EXAMPLE.ORG = {
kdc = kerberos.example.org
admin_server = kerberos.example.org
}
[domain_realm]
.example.org = EXAMPLE.ORGNote that this /etc/krb5.conf file implies
that your KDC will have the fully-qualified
hostname of kerberos.example.org.
You will need to add a CNAME (alias) entry to your zone file to
accomplish this if your KDC has a different
hostname.For large networks with a properly configured
BIND DNS server, the
above example could be trimmed to:[libdefaults]
default_realm = EXAMPLE.ORGWith the following lines being appended to the
example.org zonefile:_kerberos._udp IN SRV 01 00 88 kerberos.example.org.
_kerberos._tcp IN SRV 01 00 88 kerberos.example.org.
_kpasswd._udp IN SRV 01 00 464 kerberos.example.org.
_kerberos-adm._tcp IN SRV 01 00 749 kerberos.example.org.
_kerberos IN TXT EXAMPLE.ORGFor clients to be able to find the
Kerberos services, you
must have either a fully configured
/etc/krb5.conf or a minimally configured
/etc/krb5.confand a
properly configured DNS server.Next we will create the Kerberos
database. This database contains the keys of all principals encrypted
with a master password. You are not
required to remember this password, it will be stored in a file
(/var/heimdal/m-key). To create the master
key, run kstash and enter a password.Once the master key has been created, you can initialize the
database using the kadmin program with the
-l option (standing for local).
This option instructs kadmin to modify the
database files directly rather than going through the
kadmind network service. This handles the
chicken-and-egg problem of trying to connect to the database
before it is created. Once you have the kadmin
prompt, use the init command to create your
realms initial database.Lastly, while still in kadmin, create your
first principal using the add command. Stick
to the defaults options for the principal for now, you can always
change them later with the modify command.
Note that you can use the ? command at any
prompt to see the available options.A sample database creation session is shown below:&prompt.root; kstash
Master key: xxxxxxxx
Verifying password - Master key: xxxxxxxx
&prompt.root; kadmin -l
kadmin> init EXAMPLE.ORG
Realm max ticket life [unlimited]:
kadmin> add tillman
Max ticket life [unlimited]:
Max renewable life [unlimited]:
Attributes []:
Password: xxxxxxxx
Verifying password - Password: xxxxxxxxNow it is time to start up the KDC services.
Run /etc/rc.d/kerberos start and
/etc/rc.d/kadmind start to bring up the
services. Note that you will not have any kerberized daemons running
at this point but you should be able to confirm the that the
KDC is functioning by obtaining and listing a
ticket for the principal (user) that you just created from the
command-line of the KDC itself:&prompt.user; kinit tillman
tillman@EXAMPLE.ORG's Password:
&prompt.user; klist
Credentials cache: FILE:/tmp/krb5cc_500
Principal: tillman@EXAMPLE.ORG
Issued Expires Principal
Aug 27 15:37:58 Aug 28 01:37:58 krbtgt/EXAMPLE.ORG@EXAMPLE.ORGThe ticket can then be revoked when you have
finished:&prompt.user; k5destroyKerberos enabling a server with
Heimdal servicesKerberos5enabling servicesFirst, we need a copy of the Kerberos
configuration file, /etc/krb5.conf. To do
so, simply copy it over to the client computer from the
KDC in a secure fashion (using network utilities,
such as &man.scp.1;, or physically via a
floppy disk).Next you need a /etc/krb5.keytab file.
This is the major difference between a server providing
Kerberos enabled daemons and a
workstation — the server must have a
keytab file. This file
contains the server's host key, which allows it and the
KDC to verify each others identity. It
must be transmitted to the server in a secure fashion, as the
security of the server can be broken if the key is made public.
This explicitly means that transferring it via a clear text
channel, such as FTP, is a very bad idea.Typically, you transfer to the keytab
to the server using the kadmin program.
This is handy because you also need to create the host principal
(the KDC end of the
krb5.keytab) using
kadmin.Note that you must have already obtained a ticket and that this
ticket must be allowed to use the kadmin
interface in the kadmind.acl. See the section
titled Remote administration in the Heimdal info
pages (info heimdal) for details on designing
access control lists. If you do not want to enable remote
kadmin access, you can simply securely connect
to the KDC (via local console,
&man.ssh.1; or Kerberos
&man.telnet.1;) and perform administration locally
using kadmin -l.After installing the /etc/krb5.conf file,
you can use kadmin from the
Kerberos server. The
add --random-key command will let you add the
server's host principal, and the ext command
will allow you to extract the server's host principal to its own
keytab. For example:&prompt.root; kadmin
kadmin> add --random-key host/myserver.example.org
Max ticket life [unlimited]:
Max renewable life [unlimited]:
Attributes []:
kadmin> ext host/myserver.example.org
kadmin> exitNote that the ext command (short for
extract) stores the extracted key in
/etc/krb5.keytab by default.If you do not have kadmind running on the
KDC (possibly for security reasons) and thus
do not have access to kadmin remotely, you
can add the host principal
(host/myserver.EXAMPLE.ORG) directly on the
KDC and then extract it to a temporary file
(to avoid over-writing the /etc/krb5.keytab
on the KDC) using something like this:&prompt.root; kadmin
kadmin> ext --keytab=/tmp/example.keytab host/myserver.example.org
kadmin> exitYou can then securely copy the keytab to the server
computer (using scp or a floppy, for
example). Be sure to specify a non-default keytab name
to avoid over-writing the keytab on the
KDC.At this point your server can communicate with the
KDC (due to its krb5.conf
file) and it can prove its own identity (due to the
krb5.keytab file). It is now ready for
you to enable some Kerberos services.
For this example we will enable the telnet
service by putting a line like this into your
/etc/inetd.conf and then restarting the
&man.inetd.8; service with
/etc/rc.d/inetd restart:telnet stream tcp nowait root /usr/libexec/telnetd telnetd -a userThe critical bit is that the -a
(for authentication) type is set to user. Consult the
&man.telnetd.8; manual page for more details.Kerberos enabling a client with HeimdalKerberos5configure clientsSetting up a client computer is almost trivially easy. As
far as Kerberos configuration goes,
you only need the Kerberos
configuration file, located at /etc/krb5.conf.
Simply securely copy it over to the client computer from the
KDC.Test your client computer by attempting to use
kinit, klist, and
kdestroy from the client to obtain, show, and
then delete a ticket for the principal you created above. You
should also be able to use Kerberos
applications to connect to Kerberos
enabled servers, though if that does not work and obtaining a
ticket does the problem is likely with the server and not with
the client or the KDC.When testing an application like telnet,
try using a packet sniffer (such as &man.tcpdump.1;)
to confirm that your password is not sent in the clear. Try
using telnet with the -x
option, which encrypts the entire data stream (similar to
ssh).Various non-core Kerberos client
applications are also installed by default. This is where the
minimal nature of the base Heimdal installation is
felt: telnet is the only
Kerberos enabled service.The Heimdal port adds some of the missing client applications:
Kerberos enabled versions of
ftp, rsh,
rcp, rlogin, and a few
other less common programs. The MIT port also
contains a full suite of Kerberos
client applications.User configuration files: .k5login and .k5users.k5login.k5usersUsers within a realm typically have their
Kerberos principal (such as
tillman@EXAMPLE.ORG) mapped to a local
user account (such as a local account named
tillman). Client applications such as
telnet usually do not require a user name
or a principal.Occasionally, however, you want to grant access to a local
user account to someone who does not have a matching
Kerberos principal. For example,
tillman@EXAMPLE.ORG may need access to the
local user account webdevelopers. Other
principals may also need access to that local account.The .k5login and
.k5users files, placed in a users home
directory, can be used similar to a powerful combination of
.hosts and .rhosts,
solving this problem. For example, if a
.k5login with the following
contents:tillman@example.org
jdoe@example.orgWere to be placed into the home directory of the local user
webdevelopers then both principals listed
would have access to that account without requiring a shared
password.Reading the manual pages for these commands is recommended.
Note that the ksu manual page covers
.k5users.Kerberos Tips, Tricks, and TroubleshootingKerberos5troubleshootingWhen using either the Heimdal or MIT
Kerberos ports ensure that your
PATH environment variable lists the
Kerberos versions of the client
applications before the system versions.Do all the computers in your realm have synchronized
time settings? If not, authentication may fail.
describes how to synchronize
clocks using NTP.MIT and Heimdal inter-operate nicely.
Except for kadmin, the protocol for
which is not standardized.If you change your hostname, you also need to change your
host/ principal and update your keytab.
This also applies to special keytab entries like the
www/ principal used for Apache's
www/mod_auth_kerb.All hosts in your realm must be resolvable (both forwards
and reverse) in DNS (or
/etc/hosts as a minimum). CNAMEs
will work, but the A and PTR records must be correct and in
place. The error message is not very intuitive:
Kerberos5 refuses authentication because Read req
failed: Key table entry not found.Some operating systems that may being acting as clients
to your KDC do not set the permissions
for ksu to be setuid
root. This means that
ksu does not work, which is a good
security idea but annoying. This is not a
KDC error.With MIT
Kerberos, if you want to allow a
principal to have a ticket life longer than the default ten
hours, you must use modify_principal in
kadmin to change the maxlife of both the
principal in question and the krbtgt
principal. Then the principal can use the
-l option with kinit
to request a ticket with a longer lifetime.If you run a packet sniffer on your
KDC to add in troubleshooting and then
run kinit from a workstation, you will
notice that your TGT is sent
immediately upon running kinit —
even before you type your password! The explanation is
that the Kerberos server freely
transmits a TGT (Ticket Granting
Ticket) to any unauthorized request; however, every
TGT is encrypted in a key derived from
the user's password. Therefore, when a user types their
password it is not being sent to the KDC,
it is being used to decrypt the TGT that
kinit already obtained. If the decryption
process results in a valid ticket with a valid time stamp,
the user has valid Kerberos
credentials. These credentials include a session key for
establishing secure communications with the
Kerberos server in the future, as
well as the actual ticket-granting ticket, which is actually
encrypted with the Kerberos
server's own key. This second layer of encryption is
unknown to the user, but it is what allows the
Kerberos server to verify
the authenticity of each TGT.If you want to use long ticket lifetimes (a week, for
example) and you are using OpenSSH
to connect to the machine where your ticket is stored, make
sure that Kerberos
is set to no
in your sshd_config or else your tickets
will be deleted when you log out.Remember that host principals can have a longer ticket
lifetime as well. If your user principal has a lifetime of a
week but the host you are connecting to has a lifetime of nine
hours, you will have an expired host principal in your cache
and the ticket cache will not work as expected.When setting up a krb5.dict file to
prevent specific bad passwords from being used (the manual page
for kadmind covers this briefly), remember
that it only applies to principals that have a password policy
assigned to them. The krb5.dict files
format is simple: one string per line. Creating a symbolic
link to /usr/share/dict/words might be
useful.Differences with the MIT portThe major difference between the MIT
and Heimdal installs relates to the kadmin
program which has a different (but equivalent) set of commands
and uses a different protocol. This has a large implications
if your KDC is MIT as you
will not be able to use the Heimdal kadmin
program to administer your KDC remotely
(or vice versa, for that matter).The client applications may also take slightly different
command line options to accomplish the same tasks. Following
the instructions on the MIT
Kerberos web site
()
is recommended. Be careful of path issues: the
MIT port installs into
/usr/local/ by default, and the
normal system applications may be run instead
of MIT if your PATH
environment variable lists the system directories first.With the MIT
security/krb5 port
that is provided by &os;, be sure to read the
/usr/local/share/doc/krb5/README.FreeBSD
file installed by the port if you want to understand why logins
via telnetd and klogind
behave somewhat oddly. Most importantly, correcting the
incorrect permissions on cache file behavior
requires that the login.krb5 binary be used
for authentication so that it can properly change ownership for
the forwarded credentials.The rc.conf must also be modified
to contain the following configuration:kerberos5_server="/usr/local/sbin/krb5kdc"
kadmind5_server="/usr/local/sbin/kadmind"
kerberos5_server_enable="YES"
kadmind5_server_enable="YES"This is done because the applications for
MIT kerberos installs binaries in the
/usr/local
hierarchy.Mitigating limitations found in KerberosKerberos5limitations and shortcomingsKerberos is an all-or-nothing approachEvery service enabled on the network must be modified to
work with Kerberos (or be otherwise
secured against network attacks) or else the users credentials
could be stolen and re-used. An example of this would be
Kerberos enabling all remote shells
(via rsh and telnet, for
example) but not converting the POP3 mail
server which sends passwords in plain text.Kerberos is intended for single-user workstationsIn a multi-user environment,
Kerberos is less secure.
This is because it stores the tickets in the
/tmp directory, which is readable by all
users. If a user is sharing a computer with several other
people simultaneously (i.e. multi-user), it is possible that
the user's tickets can be stolen (copied) by another
user.This can be overcome with the -c
filename command-line option or (preferably) the
KRB5CCNAME environment variable, but this
is rarely done. In principal, storing the ticket in the users
home directory and using simple file permissions can mitigate
this problem.The KDC is a single point of failureBy design, the KDC must be as secure as
the master password database is contained on it. The
KDC should have absolutely no other
services running on it and should be physically secured. The
danger is high because Kerberos
stores all passwords encrypted with the same key (the
master key), which in turn is stored as a file
on the KDC.As a side note, a compromised master key is not quite as
bad as one might normally fear. The master key is only used
to encrypt the Kerberos database
and as a seed for the random number generator. As long as
access to your KDC is secure, an attacker
cannot do much with the master key.Additionally, if the KDC is unavailable
(perhaps due to a denial of service attack or network problems)
the network services are unusable as authentication can not be
performed, a recipe for a denial-of-service attack. This can
alleviated with multiple KDCs (a single
master and one or more slaves) and with careful implementation
of secondary or fall-back authentication
(PAM is excellent for this).Kerberos ShortcomingsKerberos allows users, hosts
and services to authenticate between themselves. It does not
have a mechanism to authenticate the KDC
to the users, hosts or services. This means that a trojanned
kinit (for example) could record all user
names and passwords. Something like
security/tripwire or
other file system integrity checking tools can alleviate
this.Resources and further informationKerberos5external resources
The Kerberos FAQDesigning
an Authentication System: a Dialog in Four ScenesRFC 1510,
The Kerberos Network Authentication Service
(V5)MIT
Kerberos home pageHeimdal
Kerberos home pageTomRhodesWritten by: OpenSSLsecurityOpenSSLOne feature that many users overlook is the
OpenSSL toolkit included
in &os;. OpenSSL provides an
encryption transport layer on top of the normal communications
layer; thus allowing it to be intertwined with many network
applications and services.Some uses of OpenSSL may include
encrypted authentication of mail clients, web based transactions
such as credit card payments and more. Many ports such as
www/apache13-ssl, and
mail/sylpheed-claws
will offer compilation support for building with
OpenSSL.In most cases the Ports Collection will attempt to build
the security/openssl port
unless the WITH_OPENSSL_BASE make variable
is explicitly set to yes.The version of OpenSSL included
in &os; supports Secure Sockets Layer v2/v3 (SSLv2/SSLv3),
Transport Layer Security v1 (TLSv1) network security protocols
and can be used as a general cryptographic library.While OpenSSL supports the
IDEA algorithm, it is disabled by default
due to United States patents. To use it, the license should
be reviewed and, if the restrictions are acceptable, the
MAKE_IDEA variable must be set in
make.conf.One of the most common uses of
OpenSSL is to provide certificates for
use with software applications. These certificates ensure
that the credentials of the company or individual are valid
and not fraudulent. If the certificate in question has
not been verified by one of the several Certificate Authorities,
or CAs, a warning is usually produced. A
Certificate Authority is a company, such as VeriSign, which will
sign certificates in order to validate credentials of individuals
or companies. This process has a cost associated with it and
is definitely not a requirement for using certificates; however,
it can put some of the more paranoid users at ease.Generating CertificatesOpenSSLcertificate generationTo generate a certificate, the following command is
available:&prompt.root; openssl req -new -nodes -out req.pem -keyout cert.pem
Generating a 1024 bit RSA private key
................++++++
.......................................++++++
writing new private key to 'cert.pem'
-----
You are about to be asked to enter information that will be incorporated
into your certificate request.
What you are about to enter is what is called a Distinguished Name or a DN.
There are quite a few fields but you can leave some blank
For some fields there will be a default value,
If you enter '.', the field will be left blank.
-----
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:PA
Locality Name (eg, city) []:Pittsburgh
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:My Company
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Systems Administrator
Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:localhost.example.org
Email Address []:trhodes@FreeBSD.org
Please enter the following 'extra' attributes
to be sent with your certificate request
A challenge password []:SOME PASSWORD
An optional company name []:Another NameNotice the response directly after the
Common Name prompt shows a domain name.
This prompt requires a server name to be entered for
verification purposes; placing anything but a domain name
would yield a useless certificate. Other options, for
instance expire time, alternate encryption algorithms, etc.
are available. A complete list may be obtained by viewing
the &man.openssl.1; manual page.Two files should now exist in
the directory in which the aforementioned command was issued.
The certificate request, req.pem, may be
sent to a certificate authority who will validate the credentials
that you entered, sign the request and return the certificate to
you. The second file created will be named cert.pem
and is the private key for the certificate and should be
protected at all costs; if this falls in the hands of others it
can be used to impersonate you (or your server).In cases where a signature from a CA is
not required, a self signed certificate can be created. First,
generate the RSA key:&prompt.root; openssl dsaparam -rand -genkey -out myRSA.key 1024Next, generate the CA key:&prompt.root; openssl gendsa -des3 -out myca.keymyRSA.keyUse this key to create the certificate:&prompt.root; openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -key myca.key -out new.crtTwo new files should appear in the directory: a certificate
authority signature file, myca.key and the
certificate itself, new.crt. These should
be placed in a directory, preferably under
/etc, which is readable
only by root. Permissions of 0700 should be fine for this and
they can be set with the chmod
utility.Using Certificates, an ExampleSo what can these files do? A good use would be to
encrypt connections to the Sendmail
MTA. This would dissolve the use of clear
text authentication for users who send mail via the local
MTA.This is not the best use in the world as some
MUAs will present the user with an
error if they have not installed the certificate locally.
Refer to the documentation included with the software for
more information on certificate installation.The following lines should be placed inside the
local .mc file:dnl SSL Options
define(`confCACERT_PATH',`/etc/certs')dnl
define(`confCACERT',`/etc/certs/new.crt')dnl
define(`confSERVER_CERT',`/etc/certs/new.crt')dnl
define(`confSERVER_KEY',`/etc/certs/myca.key')dnl
define(`confTLS_SRV_OPTIONS', `V')dnlWhere /etc/certs/
is the directory to be used for storing the certificate
and key files locally. The last few requirements are a rebuild
of the local .cf file. This is easily
achieved by typing makeinstall within the
/etc/mail
directory. Follow that up with makerestart which should start the
Sendmail daemon.If all went well there will be no error messages in the
/var/log/maillog file and
Sendmail will show up in the process
list.For a simple test, simply connect to the mail server
using the &man.telnet.1; utility:&prompt.root; telnet example.com 25
Trying 192.0.34.166...
Connected to example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 example.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.10/8.12.10; Tue, 31 Aug 2004 03:41:22 -0400 (EDT)
ehlo example.com
250-example.com Hello example.com [192.0.34.166], pleased to meet you
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE
250-DSN
250-ETRN
250-AUTH LOGIN PLAIN
250-STARTTLS
250-DELIVERBY
250 HELP
quit
221 2.0.0 example.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.If the STARTTLS line appears in the output
then everything is working correctly.NikClaytonnik@FreeBSD.orgWritten by IPsecVPN over IPsecCreating a VPN between two networks, separated by the
Internet, using FreeBSD gateways.Hiten M.Pandyahmp@FreeBSD.orgWritten by Understanding IPsecThis section will guide you through the process of setting
up IPsec, and to use it in an environment which consists of
FreeBSD and µsoft.windows; 2000/XP
machines, to make them communicate securely. In order to set up
IPsec, it is necessary that you are familiar with the concepts
of building a custom kernel (see
).IPsec is a protocol which sits on top
of the Internet Protocol (IP) layer. It allows two or more
hosts to communicate in a secure manner (hence the name). The
FreeBSD IPsec network stack is based on the
KAME implementation,
which has support for both protocol families, IPv4 and
IPv6.FreeBSD contains a hardware
accelerated IPsec stack, known as Fast
IPsec, that was obtained from OpenBSD. It employs
cryptographic hardware (whenever possible) via the
&man.crypto.4; subsystem to optimize the performance of IPsec.
This subsystem is new, and does not support all the features
that are available in the KAME version of IPsec. However, in
order to enable hardware-accelerated IPsec, the following
kernel option has to be added to your kernel configuration
file:kernel optionsFAST_IPSEC
options FAST_IPSEC # new IPsec (cannot define w/ IPSEC)
Note, that it is not currently possible to use the
Fast IPsec subsystem in lieu of the KAME
implementation of IPsec. Consult the &man.fast.ipsec.4;
manual page for more information.To let firewalls properly track state for &man.gif.4;
tunnels too, you have to enable the
in your kernel
configuration:
options IPSEC_FILTERGIF #filter ipsec packets from a tunnel
IPsecESPIPsecAHIPsec consists of two sub-protocols:Encapsulated Security Payload
(ESP), protects the IP packet data from third
party interference, by encrypting the contents using
symmetric cryptography algorithms (like Blowfish,
3DES).Authentication Header (AH),
protects the IP packet header from third party interference
and spoofing, by computing a cryptographic checksum and
hashing the IP packet header fields with a secure hashing
function. This is then followed by an additional header
that contains the hash, to allow the information in the
packet to be authenticated.ESP and AH can
either be used together or separately, depending on the
environment.VPNvirtual private networkVPNIPsec can either be used to directly encrypt the traffic
between two hosts (known as Transport
Mode); or to build virtual tunnels
between two subnets, which could be used for secure
communication between two corporate networks (known as
Tunnel Mode). The latter is more commonly
known as a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
The &man.ipsec.4; manual page should be consulted for detailed
information on the IPsec subsystem in FreeBSD.To add IPsec support to your kernel, add the following
options to your kernel configuration file:kernel optionsIPSECkernel optionsIPSEC_ESP
options IPSEC #IP security
options IPSEC_ESP #IP security (crypto; define w/ IPSEC)
kernel optionsIPSEC_DEBUGIf IPsec debugging support is desired, the following
kernel option should also be added:
options IPSEC_DEBUG #debug for IP security
The ProblemThere is no standard for what constitutes a VPN. VPNs can
be implemented using a number of different technologies, each of
which have their own strengths and weaknesses. This section
presents a scenario, and the strategies used for implementing a
VPN for this scenario.The Scenario: Two networks, connected to the Internet, to
behave as oneVPNcreatingThe premise is as follows:You have at least two sitesBoth sites are using IP internallyBoth sites are connected to the Internet, through a
gateway that is running FreeBSD.The gateway on each network has at least one public IP
address.The internal addresses of the two networks can be
public or private IP addresses, it does not matter. You can
be running NAT on the gateway machine if necessary.The internal IP addresses of the two networks
do not collide. While I expect it is
theoretically possible to use a combination of VPN
technology and NAT to get this to work, I expect it to be a
configuration nightmare.If you find that you are trying to connect two networks,
both of which, internally, use the same private IP address range
(e.g. both of them use 192.168.1.x), then one of the networks will
have to be renumbered.The network topology might look something like this:Network #1 [ Internal Hosts ] Private Net, 192.168.1.2-254
[ Win9x/NT/2K ]
[ UNIX ]
|
|
.---[fxp1]---. Private IP, 192.168.1.1
| FreeBSD |
`---[fxp0]---' Public IP, A.B.C.D
|
|
-=-=- Internet -=-=-
|
|
.---[fxp0]---. Public IP, W.X.Y.Z
| FreeBSD |
`---[fxp1]---' Private IP, 192.168.2.1
|
|
Network #2 [ Internal Hosts ]
[ Win9x/NT/2K ] Private Net, 192.168.2.2-254
[ UNIX ]Notice the two public IP addresses. I will use the letters to
refer to them in the rest of this article. Anywhere you see those
letters in this article, replace them with your own public IP
addresses. Note also that internally, the two gateway
machines have .1 IP addresses, and that the two networks have
different private IP addresses (192.168.1.x and 192.168.2.x respectively). All the
machines on the private networks have been configured to use the
.1 machine as their default
gateway.The intention is that, from a network point of view, each
network should view the machines on the other network as though
they were directly attached the same router -- albeit a slightly
slow router with an occasional tendency to drop packets.This means that (for example), machine 192.168.1.20 should be able to runping 192.168.2.34and have it work, transparently. &windows; machines should
be able to see the machines on the other network, browse file
shares, and so on, in exactly the same way that they can browse
machines on the local network.And the whole thing has to be secure. This means that
traffic between the two networks has to be encrypted.Creating a VPN between these two networks is a multi-step
process. The stages are as follows:Create a virtual network link between the two
networks, across the Internet. Test it, using tools like
&man.ping.8;, to make sure it works.Apply security policies to ensure that traffic between
the two networks is transparently encrypted and decrypted as
necessary. Test this, using tools like &man.tcpdump.1;, to
ensure that traffic is encrypted.Configure additional software on the FreeBSD gateways,
to allow &windows; machines to see one another across the
VPN.Step 1: Creating and testing a virtual
network linkSuppose that you were logged in to the gateway machine on
network #1 (with public IP address A.B.C.D, private IP address 192.168.1.1), and you ran ping
192.168.2.1, which is the private address of the machine
with IP address W.X.Y.Z. What
needs to happen in order for this to work?The gateway machine needs to know how to reach 192.168.2.1. In other words, it needs
to have a route to 192.168.2.1.Private IP addresses, such as those in the 192.168.x range are not supposed to
appear on the Internet at large. Instead, each packet you
send to 192.168.2.1 will need
to be wrapped up inside another packet. This packet will need
to appear to be from A.B.C.D,
and it will have to be sent to W.X.Y.Z. This process is called
encapsulation.Once this packet arrives at W.X.Y.Z it will need to
unencapsulated, and delivered to 192.168.2.1.You can think of this as requiring a tunnel
between the two networks. The two tunnel mouths are the IP
addresses A.B.C.D and W.X.Y.Z, and the tunnel must be told the
addresses of the private IP addresses that will be allowed to pass
through it. The tunnel is used to transfer traffic with private
IP addresses across the public Internet.This tunnel is created by using the generic interface, or
gif devices on FreeBSD. As you can
imagine, the gif interface on each
gateway host must be configured with four IP addresses; two for
the public IP addresses, and two for the private IP
addresses.Support for the gif device must be compiled in to the
&os; kernel on both machines. You can do this by adding the
line:device gifto the kernel configuration files on both machines, and
then compile, install, and reboot as normal.Configuring the tunnel is a two step process. First the
tunnel must be told what the outside (or public) IP addresses
are, using &man.ifconfig.8;. Then the private IP addresses must be
configured using &man.ifconfig.8;.On the gateway machine on network #1 you would run the
following commands to configure the tunnel.&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0 create
&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0 tunnel A.B.C.DW.X.Y.Z
&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0 inet 192.168.1.1192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffffffOn the other gateway machine you run the same commands,
but with the order of the IP addresses reversed.&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0 create
&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0 tunnel W.X.Y.ZA.B.C.D
&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0 inet 192.168.2.1192.168.1.1 netmask 0xffffffffYou can then run:ifconfig gif0to see the configuration. For example, on the network #1
gateway, you would see this:&prompt.root; ifconfig gif0
gif0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
tunnel inet A.B.C.D --> W.X.Y.Z
inet 192.168.1.1 --> 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffffff
As you can see, a tunnel has been created between the
physical addresses A.B.C.D and
W.X.Y.Z, and the traffic allowed
through the tunnel is that between 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.2.1.This will also have added an entry to the routing table
on both machines, which you can examine with the command netstat -rn.
This output is from the gateway host on network #1.&prompt.root; netstat -rn
Routing tables
Internet:
Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire
...
192.168.2.1 192.168.1.1 UH 0 0 gif0
...
As the Flags value indicates, this is a
host route, which means that each gateway knows how to reach the
other gateway, but they do not know how to reach the rest of
their respective networks. That problem will be fixed
shortly.It is likely that you are running a firewall on both
machines. This will need to be circumvented for your VPN
traffic. You might want to allow all traffic between both
networks, or you might want to include firewall rules that
protect both ends of the VPN from one another.It greatly simplifies testing if you configure the
firewall to allow all traffic through the VPN. You can always
tighten things up later. If you are using &man.ipfw.8; on the
gateway machines then a command likeipfw add 1 allow ip from any to any via gif0will allow all traffic between the two end points of the
VPN, without affecting your other firewall rules. Obviously
you will need to run this command on both gateway hosts.This is sufficient to allow each gateway machine to ping
the other. On 192.168.1.1, you
should be able to runping 192.168.2.1and get a response, and you should be able to do the same
thing on the other gateway machine.However, you will not be able to reach internal machines
on either network yet. This is because of the routing --
although the gateway machines know how to reach one another,
they do not know how to reach the network behind each one.To solve this problem you must add a static route on each
gateway machine. The command to do this on the first gateway
would be:route add 192.168.2.0 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00
This says In order to reach the hosts on the
network 192.168.2.0, send the
packets to the host 192.168.2.1. You will need to
run a similar command on the other gateway, but with the
192.168.1.x addresses
instead.IP traffic from hosts on one network will now be able to
reach hosts on the other network.That has now created two thirds of a VPN between the two
networks, in as much as it is virtual and it is a
network. It is not private yet. You can test
this using &man.ping.8; and &man.tcpdump.1;. Log in to the
gateway host and runtcpdump dst host 192.168.2.1In another log in session on the same host runping 192.168.2.1You will see output that looks something like this:
16:10:24.018080 192.168.1.1 > 192.168.2.1: icmp: echo request
16:10:24.018109 192.168.1.1 > 192.168.2.1: icmp: echo reply
16:10:25.018814 192.168.1.1 > 192.168.2.1: icmp: echo request
16:10:25.018847 192.168.1.1 > 192.168.2.1: icmp: echo reply
16:10:26.028896 192.168.1.1 > 192.168.2.1: icmp: echo request
16:10:26.029112 192.168.1.1 > 192.168.2.1: icmp: echo reply
As you can see, the ICMP messages are going back and forth
unencrypted. If you had used the parameter to
&man.tcpdump.1; to grab more bytes of data from the packets you
would see more information.Obviously this is unacceptable. The next section will
discuss securing the link between the two networks so that it
all traffic is automatically encrypted.Summary:Configure both kernels with device gif.Edit /etc/rc.conf on gateway host
#1 and add the following lines (replacing IP addresses as
necessary).gif_interfaces="gif0"
gifconfig_gif0="A.B.C.D W.X.Y.Z"
ifconfig_gif0="inet 192.168.1.1 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffffff"
static_routes="vpn"
route_vpn="192.168.2.0 192.168.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00"
Edit your firewall script
(/etc/rc.firewall, or similar) on both
hosts, and addipfw add 1 allow ip from any to any via gif0Make similar changes to
/etc/rc.conf on gateway host #2,
reversing the order of IP addresses.Step 2: Securing the linkTo secure the link we will be using IPsec. IPsec provides
a mechanism for two hosts to agree on an encryption key, and to
then use this key in order to encrypt data between the two
hosts.The are two areas of configuration to be considered here.There must be a mechanism for two hosts to agree on the
encryption mechanism to use. Once two hosts have agreed on
this mechanism there is said to be a security association
between them.There must be a mechanism for specifying which traffic
should be encrypted. Obviously, you do not want to encrypt
all your outgoing traffic -- you only want to encrypt the
traffic that is part of the VPN. The rules that you put in
place to determine what traffic will be encrypted are called
security policies.Security associations and security policies are both
maintained by the kernel, and can be modified by userland
programs. However, before you can do this you must configure the
kernel to support IPsec and the Encapsulated Security Payload
(ESP) protocol. This is done by configuring a kernel with:kernel optionsIPSECoptions IPSEC
options IPSEC_ESP
and recompiling, reinstalling, and rebooting. As before
you will need to do this to the kernels on both of the gateway
hosts.IKEYou have two choices when it comes to setting up security
associations. You can configure them by hand between two hosts,
which entails choosing the encryption algorithm, encryption keys,
and so forth, or you can use daemons that implement the Internet
Key Exchange protocol (IKE) to do this for you.I recommend the latter. Apart from anything else, it is
easier to set up.IPsecsecurity policiessetkeyEditing and displaying security policies is carried out
using &man.setkey.8;. By analogy, setkey is
to the kernel's security policy tables as &man.route.8; is to
the kernel's routing tables. setkey can
also display the current security associations, and to continue
the analogy further, is akin to netstat -r
in that respect.There are a number of choices for daemons to manage
security associations with FreeBSD. This article will describe
how to use one of these, racoon — which is available from
security/ipsec-tools in the &os; Ports
collection.racoonThe racoon software must be run on both gateway hosts. On each host it
is configured with the IP address of the other end of the VPN,
and a secret key (which you choose, and must be the same on both
gateways).The two daemons then contact one another, confirm that they
are who they say they are (by using the secret key that you
configured). The daemons then generate a new secret key, and use
this to encrypt the traffic over the VPN. They periodically
change this secret, so that even if an attacker were to crack one
of the keys (which is as theoretically close to unfeasible as it
gets) it will not do them much good -- by the time they have cracked
the key the two daemons have chosen another one.The configuration file for racoon is stored in
${PREFIX}/etc/racoon. You should find a
configuration file there, which should not need to be changed
too much. The other component of racoon's configuration,
which you will need to change, is the pre-shared
key.The default racoon configuration expects to find this in
the file ${PREFIX}/etc/racoon/psk.txt. It is important to note
that the pre-shared key is not the key that will be used to
encrypt your traffic across the VPN link, it is simply a token
that allows the key management daemons to trust one another.psk.txt contains a line for each
remote site you are dealing with. In this example, where there
are two sites, each psk.txt file will contain one line (because
each end of the VPN is only dealing with one other end).On gateway host #1 this line should look like this:W.X.Y.Z secretThat is, the public IP address of the remote end,
whitespace, and a text string that provides the secret.
Obviously, you should not use secret as your key -- the normal
rules for choosing a password apply.On gateway host #2 the line would look like thisA.B.C.D secretThat is, the public IP address of the remote end, and the
same secret key. psk.txt must be mode
0600 (i.e., only read/write to
root) before racoon will run.You must run racoon on both gateway machines. You will
also need to add some firewall rules to allow the IKE traffic,
which is carried over UDP to the ISAKMP (Internet Security Association
Key Management Protocol) port. Again, this should be fairly early in
your firewall ruleset.ipfw add 1 allow udp from A.B.C.D to W.X.Y.Z isakmp
ipfw add 1 allow udp from W.X.Y.Z to A.B.C.D isakmp
Once racoon is running you can try pinging one gateway host
from the other. The connection is still not encrypted, but
racoon will then set up the security associations between the two
hosts -- this might take a moment, and you may see this as a
short delay before the ping commands start responding.Once the security association has been set up you can
view it using &man.setkey.8;. Runsetkey -Don either host to view the security association information.That's one half of the problem. They other half is setting
your security policies.To create a sensible security policy, let's review what's
been set up so far. This discussions hold for both ends of the
link.Each IP packet that you send out has a header that contains
data about the packet. The header includes the IP addresses of
both the source and destination. As we already know, private IP
addresses, such as the 192.168.x.y
range are not supposed to appear on the public Internet.
Instead, they must first be encapsulated inside another packet.
This packet must have the public source and destination IP
addresses substituted for the private addresses.So if your outgoing packet started looking like this:
.----------------------.
| Src: 192.168.1.1 |
| Dst: 192.168.2.1 |
| <other header info> |
+----------------------+
| <packet data> |
`----------------------'Then it will be encapsulated inside another packet, looking
something like this:
.--------------------------.
| Src: A.B.C.D |
| Dst: W.X.Y.Z |
| <other header info> |
+--------------------------+
| .----------------------. |
| | Src: 192.168.1.1 | |
| | Dst: 192.168.2.1 | |
| | <other header info> | |
| +----------------------+ |
| | <packet data> | |
| `----------------------' |
`--------------------------'This encapsulation is carried out by the
gif device. As
you can see, the packet now has real IP addresses on the outside,
and our original packet has been wrapped up as data inside the
packet that will be put out on the Internet.Obviously, we want all traffic between the VPNs to be
encrypted. You might try putting this in to words, as:If a packet leaves from A.B.C.D, and it is destined for W.X.Y.Z, then encrypt it, using the
necessary security associations.If a packet arrives from W.X.Y.Z, and it is destined for A.B.C.D, then decrypt it, using the
necessary security associations.That's close, but not quite right. If you did this, all
traffic to and from W.X.Y.Z, even
traffic that was not part of the VPN, would be encrypted. That's
not quite what you want. The correct policy is as followsIf a packet leaves from A.B.C.D, and that packet is encapsulating
another packet, and it is destined for W.X.Y.Z, then encrypt it, using the
necessary security associations.If a packet arrives from W.X.Y.Z, and that packet is encapsulating
another packet, and it is destined for A.B.C.D, then decrypt it, using the
necessary security associations.A subtle change, but a necessary one.Security policies are also set using &man.setkey.8;.
&man.setkey.8; features a configuration language for defining the
policy. You can either enter configuration instructions via
stdin, or you can use the option to specify a
filename that contains configuration instructions.The configuration on gateway host #1 (which has the public
IP address A.B.C.D) to force all
outbound traffic to W.X.Y.Z to be
encrypted is:
spdadd A.B.C.D/32 W.X.Y.Z/32 ipencap -P out ipsec esp/tunnel/A.B.C.D-W.X.Y.Z/require;
Put these commands in a file (e.g.
/etc/ipsec.conf) and then run&prompt.root; setkey -f /etc/ipsec.conf tells &man.setkey.8; that we want
to add a rule to the secure policy database. The rest of this
line specifies which packets will match this policy. A.B.C.D/32 and W.X.Y.Z/32 are the IP addresses and
netmasks that identify the network or hosts that this policy will
apply to. In this case, we want it to apply to traffic between
these two hosts. tells the kernel that
this policy should only apply to packets that encapsulate other
packets. says that this policy applies
to outgoing packets, and says that the
packet will be secured.The second line specifies how this packet will be
encrypted. is the protocol that will be
used, while indicates that the packet
will be further encapsulated in an IPsec packet. The repeated
use of A.B.C.D and W.X.Y.Z is used to select the security
association to use, and the final
mandates that packets must be encrypted if they match this
rule.This rule only matches outgoing packets. You will need a
similar rule to match incoming packets.spdadd W.X.Y.Z/32 A.B.C.D/32 ipencap -P in ipsec esp/tunnel/W.X.Y.Z-A.B.C.D/require;Note the instead of
in this case, and the necessary reversal of
the IP addresses.The other gateway host (which has the public IP address
W.X.Y.Z) will need similar rules.spdadd W.X.Y.Z/32 A.B.C.D/32 ipencap -P out ipsec esp/tunnel/W.X.Y.Z-A.B.C.D/require;
spdadd A.B.C.D/32 W.X.Y.Z/32 ipencap -P in ipsec esp/tunnel/A.B.C.D-W.X.Y.Z/require;Finally, you need to add firewall rules to allow ESP and
IPENCAP packets back and forth. These rules will need to be
added to both hosts.ipfw add 1 allow esp from A.B.C.D to W.X.Y.Z
ipfw add 1 allow esp from W.X.Y.Z to A.B.C.D
ipfw add 1 allow ipencap from A.B.C.D to W.X.Y.Z
ipfw add 1 allow ipencap from W.X.Y.Z to A.B.C.D
Because the rules are symmetric you can use the same rules
on each gateway host.Outgoing packets will now look something like this:
.------------------------------. --------------------------.
| Src: A.B.C.D | |
| Dst: W.X.Y.Z | |
| <other header info> | | Encrypted
+------------------------------+ | packet.
| .--------------------------. | -------------. | contents
| | Src: A.B.C.D | | | | are
| | Dst: W.X.Y.Z | | | | completely
| | <other header info> | | | |- secure
| +--------------------------+ | | Encap'd | from third
| | .----------------------. | | -. | packet | party
| | | Src: 192.168.1.1 | | | | Original |- with real | snooping
| | | Dst: 192.168.2.1 | | | | packet, | IP addr |
| | | <other header info> | | | |- private | |
| | +----------------------+ | | | IP addr | |
| | | <packet data> | | | | | |
| | `----------------------' | | -' | |
| `--------------------------' | -------------' |
`------------------------------' --------------------------'
When they are received by the far end of the VPN they will
first be decrypted (using the security associations that have
been negotiated by racoon). Then they will enter the
gif interface, which will unwrap
the second layer, until you are left with the innermost
packet, which can then travel in to the inner network.You can check the security using the same &man.ping.8; test from
earlier. First, log in to the
A.B.C.D gateway machine, and
run:tcpdump dst host 192.168.2.1In another log in session on the same host runping 192.168.2.1This time you should see output like the following:XXX tcpdump outputNow, as you can see, &man.tcpdump.1; shows the ESP packets. If
you try to examine them with the option you will see
(apparently) gibberish, because of the encryption.Congratulations. You have just set up a VPN between two
remote sites.SummaryConfigure both kernels with:options IPSEC
options IPSEC_ESP
Install security/ipsec-tools. Edit
${PREFIX}/etc/racoon/psk.txt on both
gateway hosts, adding an entry for the remote host's IP
address and a secret key that they both know. Make sure
this file is mode 0600.Add the following lines to
/etc/rc.conf on each host:ipsec_enable="YES"
ipsec_file="/etc/ipsec.conf"
Create an /etc/ipsec.conf on each
host that contains the necessary spdadd lines. On gateway
host #1 this would be:
spdadd A.B.C.D/32 W.X.Y.Z/32 ipencap -P out ipsec
esp/tunnel/A.B.C.D-W.X.Y.Z/require;
spdadd W.X.Y.Z/32 A.B.C.D/32 ipencap -P in ipsec
esp/tunnel/W.X.Y.Z-A.B.C.D/require;
On gateway host #2 this would be:
spdadd W.X.Y.Z/32 A.B.C.D/32 ipencap -P out ipsec
esp/tunnel/W.X.Y.Z-A.B.C.D/require;
spdadd A.B.C.D/32 W.X.Y.Z/32 ipencap -P in ipsec
esp/tunnel/A.B.C.D-W.X.Y.Z/require;
Add firewall rules to allow IKE, ESP, and IPENCAP
traffic to both hosts:
ipfw add 1 allow udp from A.B.C.D to W.X.Y.Z isakmp
ipfw add 1 allow udp from W.X.Y.Z to A.B.C.D isakmp
ipfw add 1 allow esp from A.B.C.D to W.X.Y.Z
ipfw add 1 allow esp from W.X.Y.Z to A.B.C.D
ipfw add 1 allow ipencap from A.B.C.D to W.X.Y.Z
ipfw add 1 allow ipencap from W.X.Y.Z to A.B.C.D
The previous two steps should suffice to get the VPN up and
running. Machines on each network will be able to refer to one
another using IP addresses, and all traffic across the link will
be automatically and securely encrypted.ChernLeeContributed by OpenSSHOpenSSHsecurityOpenSSHOpenSSH is a set of network connectivity tools used to
access remote machines securely. It can be used as a direct
replacement for rlogin,
rsh, rcp, and
telnet. Additionally, TCP/IP
connections can be tunneled/forwarded securely through SSH.
OpenSSH encrypts all traffic to effectively eliminate eavesdropping,
connection hijacking, and other network-level attacks.OpenSSH is maintained by the OpenBSD project, and is based
upon SSH v1.2.12 with all the recent bug fixes and updates. It
is compatible with both SSH protocols 1 and 2.Advantages of Using OpenSSHNormally, when using &man.telnet.1; or &man.rlogin.1;,
data is sent over the network in an clear, un-encrypted form.
Network sniffers anywhere in between the client and server can
steal your user/password information or data transferred in
your session. OpenSSH offers a variety of authentication and
encryption methods to prevent this from happening.Enabling sshdOpenSSHenablingThe
sshd is an option presented during
a Standard install of &os;. To see if
sshd is enabled, check the
rc.conf file for:sshd_enable="YES"This will load &man.sshd.8;, the daemon program for OpenSSH,
the next time your system initializes. Alternatively, it is
possible to use /etc/rc.d/sshd &man.rc.8;
script to start OpenSSH:/etc/rc.d/sshd startSSH ClientOpenSSHclientThe &man.ssh.1; utility works similarly to
&man.rlogin.1;.&prompt.root; ssh user@example.com
Host key not found from the list of known hosts.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes
Host 'example.com' added to the list of known hosts.
user@example.com's password: *******The login will continue just as it would have if a session was
created using rlogin or
telnet. SSH utilizes a key fingerprint
system for verifying the authenticity of the server when the
client connects. The user is prompted to enter
yes only when
connecting for the first time. Future attempts to login are all
verified against the saved fingerprint key. The SSH client
will alert you if the saved fingerprint differs from the
received fingerprint on future login attempts. The fingerprints
are saved in ~/.ssh/known_hosts, or
~/.ssh/known_hosts2 for SSH v2
fingerprints.By default, recent versions of the
OpenSSH servers only accept SSH v2
connections. The client will use version 2 if possible and
will fall back to version 1. The client can also be forced to
use one or the other by passing it the or
for version 1 or version 2, respectively.
The version 1 compatibility is maintained in the client for
backwards compatibility with older versions.Secure CopyOpenSSHsecure copyscpThe &man.scp.1; command works similarly to
&man.rcp.1;; it copies a file to or from a remote machine,
except in a secure fashion.&prompt.root; scp user@example.com:/COPYRIGHT COPYRIGHT
user@example.com's password: *******
COPYRIGHT 100% |*****************************| 4735
00:00
&prompt.root;Since the fingerprint was already saved for this host in the
previous example, it is verified when using &man.scp.1;
here.The arguments passed to &man.scp.1; are similar
to &man.cp.1;, with the file or files in the first
argument, and the destination in the second. Since the file is
fetched over the network, through SSH, one or more of the file
arguments takes on the form
.ConfigurationOpenSSHconfigurationThe system-wide configuration files for both the
OpenSSH daemon and client reside
within the /etc/ssh directory.ssh_config configures the client
settings, while sshd_config configures the
daemon.Additionally, the
(/usr/sbin/sshd by default), and
rc.conf
options can provide more levels of configuration.ssh-keygenInstead of using passwords, &man.ssh-keygen.1; can
be used to generate DSA or RSA keys to authenticate a user:&prompt.user; ssh-keygen -t dsa
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/user/.ssh/id_dsa):
Created directory '/home/user/.ssh'.
Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
Enter same passphrase again:
Your identification has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
bb:48:db:f2:93:57:80:b6:aa:bc:f5:d5:ba:8f:79:17 user@host.example.com
&man.ssh-keygen.1; will create a public and private
key pair for use in authentication. The private key is stored in
~/.ssh/id_dsa or
~/.ssh/id_rsa, whereas the public key is
stored in ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub or
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub, respectively for DSA and
RSA key types. The public key must be placed in
~/.ssh/authorized_keys of the remote
machine in order for the setup to work. Similarly, RSA version
1 public keys should be placed in
~/.ssh/authorized_keys.This will allow connection to the remote machine based upon
SSH keys instead of passwords.If a passphrase is used in &man.ssh-keygen.1;, the user
will be prompted for a password each time in order to use the
private key. &man.ssh-agent.1; can alleviate the strain of
repeatedly entering long passphrases, and is explored in the
section below.The various options and files can be different
according to the OpenSSH version
you have on your system; to avoid problems you should consult
the &man.ssh-keygen.1; manual page.ssh-agent and ssh-addThe &man.ssh-agent.1; and &man.ssh-add.1; utilities provide
methods for SSH keys to be loaded
into memory for use, without needing to type the passphrase
each time.The &man.ssh-agent.1; utility will handle the authentication
using the private key(s) that are loaded into it.
&man.ssh-agent.1; should be used to launch another application.
At the most basic level, it could spawn a shell or at a more
advanced level, a window manager.To use &man.ssh-agent.1; in a shell, first it will need to
be spawned with a shell as an argument. Secondly, the
identity needs to be added by running &man.ssh-add.1; and
providing it the passphrase for the private key. Once these
steps have been completed the user will be able to &man.ssh.1;
to any host that has the corresponding public key installed.
For example:&prompt.user; ssh-agent csh
&prompt.user; ssh-add
Enter passphrase for /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa:
Identity added: /home/user/.ssh/id_dsa (/home/user/.ssh/id_dsa)
&prompt.user;To use &man.ssh-agent.1; in X11, a call to
&man.ssh-agent.1; will need to be placed in
~/.xinitrc. This will provide the
&man.ssh-agent.1; services to all programs launched in X11.
An example ~/.xinitrc file might look
like this:exec ssh-agent startxfce4This would launch &man.ssh-agent.1;, which would in turn
launch XFCE, every time X11 starts.
Then once that is done and X11 has been restarted so that the
changes can take effect, simply run &man.ssh-add.1; to load
all of your SSH keys.SSH TunnelingOpenSSHtunnelingOpenSSH has the ability to create a tunnel to encapsulate
another protocol in an encrypted session.The following command tells &man.ssh.1; to create a tunnel
for telnet:&prompt.user; ssh -2 -N -f -L 5023:localhost:23 user@foo.example.com
&prompt.user;The ssh command is used with the
following options:Forces ssh to use version 2 of
the protocol. (Do not use if you are working with older
SSH servers)Indicates no command, or tunnel only. If omitted,
ssh would initiate a normal
session.Forces ssh to run in the
background.Indicates a local tunnel in
localport:remotehost:remoteport
fashion.The remote SSH server.An SSH tunnel works by creating a listen socket on
localhost on the specified port.
It then forwards any connection received
on the local host/port via the SSH connection to the specified
remote host and port.In the example, port 5023 on
localhost is being forwarded to port
23 on localhost
of the remote machine. Since 23 is telnet,
this would create a secure telnet session through an SSH tunnel.This can be used to wrap any number of insecure TCP
protocols such as SMTP, POP3, FTP, etc.Using SSH to Create a Secure Tunnel for SMTP&prompt.user; ssh -2 -N -f -L 5025:localhost:25 user@mailserver.example.com
user@mailserver.example.com's password: *****
&prompt.user; telnet localhost 5025
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mailserver.example.com ESMTPThis can be used in conjunction with an
&man.ssh-keygen.1; and additional user accounts to create a
more seamless/hassle-free SSH tunneling environment. Keys
can be used in place of typing a password, and the tunnels
can be run as a separate user.Practical SSH Tunneling ExamplesSecure Access of a POP3 ServerAt work, there is an SSH server that accepts
connections from the outside. On the same office network
resides a mail server running a POP3 server. The network,
or network path between your home and office may or may not
be completely trustable. Because of this, you need to check
your e-mail in a secure manner. The solution is to create
an SSH connection to your office's SSH server, and tunnel
through to the mail server.&prompt.user; ssh -2 -N -f -L 2110:mail.example.com:110 user@ssh-server.example.com
user@ssh-server.example.com's password: ******When the tunnel is up and running, you can point your
mail client to send POP3 requests to localhost
port 2110. A connection here will be forwarded securely across
the tunnel to mail.example.com.Bypassing a Draconian FirewallSome network administrators impose extremely draconian
firewall rules, filtering not only incoming connections,
but outgoing connections. You may be only given access
to contact remote machines on ports 22 and 80 for SSH
and web surfing.You may wish to access another (perhaps non-work
related) service, such as an Ogg Vorbis server to stream
music. If this Ogg Vorbis server is streaming on some other
port than 22 or 80, you will not be able to access it.The solution is to create an SSH connection to a machine
outside of your network's firewall, and use it to tunnel to
the Ogg Vorbis server.&prompt.user; ssh -2 -N -f -L 8888:music.example.com:8000 user@unfirewalled-system.example.org
user@unfirewalled-system.example.org's password: *******Your streaming client can now be pointed to
localhost port 8888, which will be
forwarded over to music.example.com port
8000, successfully evading the firewall.The AllowUsers Users OptionIt is often a good idea to limit which users can log in and
from where. The AllowUsers option is a good
way to accomplish this. For example, to only allow the
root user to log in from
192.168.1.32, something like this
would be appropriate in the
/etc/ssh/sshd_config file:AllowUsers root@192.168.1.32To allow the user admin to log in from
anywhere, just list the username by itself:AllowUsers adminMultiple users should be listed on the same line, like so:AllowUsers root@192.168.1.32 adminIt is important that you list each user that needs to
log in to this machine; otherwise they will be locked out.After making changes to
/etc/ssh/sshd_config you must tell
&man.sshd.8; to reload its config files, by running:&prompt.root; /etc/rc.d/sshd reloadFurther ReadingOpenSSH&man.ssh.1; &man.scp.1; &man.ssh-keygen.1;
&man.ssh-agent.1; &man.ssh-add.1; &man.ssh.config.5;&man.sshd.8; &man.sftp-server.8; &man.sshd.config.5;TomRhodesContributed by ACLFile System Access Control ListsIn conjunction with file system enhancements like snapshots, FreeBSD 5.0
and later offers the security of File System Access Control Lists
- (ACLs).
+ (ACLs).
Access Control Lists extend the standard &unix;
permission model in a highly compatible (&posix;.1e) way. This feature
permits an administrator to make use of and take advantage of a
more sophisticated security model.To enable ACL support for UFS
file systems, the following:options UFS_ACLmust be compiled into the kernel. If this option has
not been compiled in, a warning message will be displayed
- when attempting to mount a file system supporting ACLs.
+ when attempting to mount a file system supporting ACLs.
This option is included in the GENERIC kernel.
- ACLs rely on extended attributes being enabled on
+ ACLs rely on extended attributes being enabled on
the file system. Extended attributes are natively supported in the next generation
&unix; file system, UFS2.A higher level of administrative overhead is required to
configure extended attributes on UFS1 than on
UFS2. The performance of extended attributes
on UFS2 is also substantially higher. As a
result, UFS2 is generally recommended in preference
to UFS1 for use with access control lists.
- ACLs are enabled by the mount-time administrative
+ ACLs are enabled by the mount-time administrative
flag, , which may be added to /etc/fstab.
The mount-time flag can also be automatically set in a persistent manner using
- &man.tunefs.8; to modify a superblock ACLs flag in the
+ &man.tunefs.8; to modify a superblock ACLs flag in the
file system header. In general, it is preferred to use the superblock flag
for several reasons:
- The mount-time ACLs flag cannot be changed by a
+ The mount-time ACLs flag cannot be changed by a
remount (&man.mount.8; ), only by means of a complete
&man.umount.8; and fresh &man.mount.8;. This means that
- ACLs cannot be enabled on the root file system after boot.
+ ACLs cannot be enabled on the root file system after boot.
It also means that you cannot change the disposition of a file system once
it is in use.Setting the superblock flag will cause the file system to always be
- mounted with ACLs enabled even if there is not an
+ mounted with ACLs enabled even if there is not an
fstab entry or if the devices re-order. This prevents
- accidental mounting of the file system without ACLs
- enabled, which can result in ACLs being improperly enforced,
+ accidental mounting of the file system without ACLs
+ enabled, which can result in ACLs being improperly enforced,
and hence security problems.
- We may change the ACLs behavior to allow the flag to
+ We may change the ACLs behavior to allow the flag to
be enabled without a complete fresh &man.mount.8;, but we consider it desirable to
- discourage accidental mounting without ACLs enabled, because you
- can shoot your feet quite nastily if you enable ACLs, then disable
+ discourage accidental mounting without ACLs enabled, because you
+ can shoot your feet quite nastily if you enable ACLs, then disable
them, then re-enable them without flushing the extended attributes. In general, once
- you have enabled ACLs on a file system, they should not be disabled,
+ you have enabled ACLs on a file system, they should not be disabled,
as the resulting file protections may not be compatible with those intended by the
- users of the system, and re-enabling ACLs may re-attach the previous
- ACLs to files that have since had their permissions changed,
+ users of the system, and re-enabling ACLs may re-attach the previous
+ ACLs to files that have since had their permissions changed,
resulting in other unpredictable behavior.
- File systems with ACLs enabled will show a +
+ File systems with ACLs enabled will show a +
(plus) sign in their permission settings when viewed. For example:drwx------ 2 robert robert 512 Dec 27 11:54 private
drwxrwx---+ 2 robert robert 512 Dec 23 10:57 directory1
drwxrwx---+ 2 robert robert 512 Dec 22 10:20 directory2
drwxrwx---+ 2 robert robert 512 Dec 27 11:57 directory3
drwxr-xr-x 2 robert robert 512 Nov 10 11:54 public_htmlHere we see that the directory1,
directory2, and directory3
- directories are all taking advantage of ACLs. The
+ directories are all taking advantage of ACLs. The
public_html directory is not.Making Use of ACLsThe file system ACLs can be viewed by the
&man.getfacl.1; utility. For instance, to view the
ACL settings on the test
file, one would use the command:&prompt.user; getfacl test
#file:test
#owner:1001
#group:1001
user::rw-
group::r--
other::r--To change the ACL settings on this file,
invoke the &man.setfacl.1; utility. Observe:&prompt.user; setfacl -k testThe flag will remove all of the
currently defined ACLs from a file or file
system. The more preferable method would be to use
as it leaves the basic fields required for
ACLs to work.&prompt.user; setfacl -m u:trhodes:rwx,group:web:r--,o::--- testIn the aforementioned command, the
option was used to modify the default ACL
entries. Since there were no pre-defined entries, as they were
removed by the previous command, this will restore the default
options and assign the options listed. Take care to notice that
if you add a user or group which does not exist on the system,
an Invalid argument error will be printed
to stdout.TomRhodesContributed by PortauditMonitoring Third Party Security IssuesIn recent years, the security world has made many improvements
to how vulnerability assessment is handled. The threat of system
intrusion increases as third party utilities are installed and
configured for virtually any operating system available
today.Vulnerability assessment is a key factor in security, and
while &os; releases advisories for the base system, doing so
for every third party utility is beyond the &os; Project's
capability. There is a way to mitigate third party
vulnerabilities and warn administrators of known security
issues. A &os; add on utility known as
Portaudit exists solely for this
purpose.The security/portaudit port
polls a database, updated and maintained by the &os; Security
Team and ports developers, for known security issues.To begin using Portaudit, one
must install it from the Ports Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/security/portaudit && make install cleanDuring the install process, the configuration files for
&man.periodic.8; will be updated, permitting
Portaudit output in the daily security
runs. Ensure the daily security run emails, which are sent to
root's email account, are being read. No
more configuration will be required here.After installation, an administrator can update the database
and view known vulnerabilities in installed packages by invoking
the following command:&prompt.root; portaudit -FdaThe database will automatically be updated during the
&man.periodic.8; run; thus, the previous command is completely
optional. It is only required for the following
examples.To audit the third party utilities installed as part of
the Ports Collection at anytime, an administrator need only run
the following command:&prompt.root; portaudit -aPortaudit will produce something
like this for vulnerable packages:Affected package: cups-base-1.1.22.0_1
Type of problem: cups-base -- HPGL buffer overflow vulnerability.
Reference: <http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/portaudit/40a3bca2-6809-11d9-a9e7-0001020eed82.html>
1 problem(s) in your installed packages found.
You are advised to update or deinstall the affected package(s) immediately.By pointing a web browser to the URL shown,
an administrator may obtain more information about the
vulnerability in question. This will include versions affected,
by &os; Port version, along with other web sites which may contain
security advisories.In short, Portaudit is a powerful
utility and extremely useful when coupled with the
Portupgrade port.TomRhodesContributed by FreeBSD Security Advisories&os; Security AdvisoriesLike many production quality operating systems, &os; publishes
Security Advisories. These advisories are usually
mailed to the security lists and noted in the Errata only
after the appropriate releases have been patched. This section
will work to explain what an advisory is, how to understand it,
and what measures to take in order to patch a system.What does an advisory look like?The &os; security advisories look similar to the one below,
taken from the &a.security-notifications.name; mailing list.=============================================================================
&os;-SA-XX:XX.UTIL Security Advisory
The &os; Project
Topic: denial of service due to some problem
Category: core
Module: sys
Announced: 2003-09-23
Credits: Person@EMAIL-ADDRESS
Affects: All releases of &os;
&os; 4-STABLE prior to the correction date
Corrected: 2003-09-23 16:42:59 UTC (RELENG_4, 4.9-PRERELEASE)
2003-09-23 20:08:42 UTC (RELENG_5_1, 5.1-RELEASE-p6)
2003-09-23 20:07:06 UTC (RELENG_5_0, 5.0-RELEASE-p15)
2003-09-23 16:44:58 UTC (RELENG_4_8, 4.8-RELEASE-p8)
2003-09-23 16:47:34 UTC (RELENG_4_7, 4.7-RELEASE-p18)
2003-09-23 16:49:46 UTC (RELENG_4_6, 4.6-RELEASE-p21)
2003-09-23 16:51:24 UTC (RELENG_4_5, 4.5-RELEASE-p33)
2003-09-23 16:52:45 UTC (RELENG_4_4, 4.4-RELEASE-p43)
2003-09-23 16:54:39 UTC (RELENG_4_3, 4.3-RELEASE-p39)
CVE Name: CVE-XXXX-XXXX
For general information regarding FreeBSD Security Advisories,
including descriptions of the fields above, security branches, and the
following sections, please visit
http://www.FreeBSD.org/security/.
I. Background
II. Problem Description
III. Impact
IV. Workaround
V. Solution
VI. Correction details
VII. ReferencesThe Topic field indicates exactly what the problem is.
It is basically an introduction to the current security
advisory and notes the utility with the
vulnerability.The Category refers to the affected part of the system
which may be one of core, contrib, or ports. The core
category means that the vulnerability affects a core
component of the &os; operating system. The contrib
category means that the vulnerability affects software
contributed to the &os; Project, such as
sendmail. Finally the ports
category indicates that the vulnerability affects add on
software available as part of the Ports Collection.The Module field refers to the component location, for
instance sys. In this example, we see that the module,
sys, is affected; therefore, this vulnerability
affects a component used within the kernel.The Announced field reflects the date said security
advisory was published, or announced to the world. This
means that the security team has verified that the problem
does exist and that a patch has been committed to the &os;
source code repository.The Credits field gives credit to the individual or
organization who noticed the vulnerability and reported
it.The Affects field explains which releases of &os; are
affected by this vulnerability. For the kernel, a quick
look over the output from ident on the
affected files will help in determining the revision.
For ports, the version number is listed after the port name
in /var/db/pkg. If the system does not
sync with the &os; CVS repository and rebuild
daily, chances are that it is affected.The Corrected field indicates the date, time, time
offset, and release that was corrected.Reserved for the identification information used to look up
vulnerabilities in the Common Vulnerabilities Database system.The Background field gives information on exactly what
the affected utility is. Most of the time this is why
the utility exists in &os;, what it is used for, and a bit
of information on how the utility came to be.The Problem Description field explains the security hole
in depth. This can include information on flawed code, or
even how the utility could be maliciously used to open
a security hole.The Impact field describes what type of impact the
problem could have on a system. For example, this could
be anything from a denial of service attack, to extra
privileges available to users, or even giving the attacker
superuser access.The Workaround field offers a feasible workaround to
system administrators who may be incapable of upgrading
the system. This may be due to time constraints, network
availability, or a slew of other reasons. Regardless,
security should not be taken lightly, and an affected system
should either be patched or the security hole workaround
should be implemented.The Solution field offers instructions on patching the
affected system. This is a step by step tested and verified
method for getting a system patched and working
securely.The Correction Details field displays the
CVS branch or release name with the
periods changed to underscore characters. It also shows
the revision number of the affected files within each
branch.The References field usually offers sources of other
information. This can include web URLs,
books, mailing lists, and newsgroups.TomRhodesContributed by Process AccountingProcess AccountingProcess accounting is a security method in which an
administrator may keep track of system resources used,
their allocation among users, provide for system monitoring,
and minimally track a user's commands.This indeed has its own positive and negative points. One of
the positives is that an intrusion may be narrowed down
to the point of entry. A negative is the amount of logs
generated by process accounting, and the disk space they may
require. This section will walk an administrator through
the basics of process accounting.Enable and Utilizing Process AccountingBefore making use of process accounting, it
must be enabled. To do this, execute the following
commands:&prompt.root; touch /var/account/acct
&prompt.root; accton /var/account/acct
&prompt.root; echo 'accounting_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.confOnce enabled, accounting will begin to track
CPU stats, commands, etc. All accounting
logs are in a non-human readable format and may be viewed
using the &man.sa.8; utility. If issued without any options,
sa will print information relating to the
number of per user calls, the total elapsed time in minutes,
total CPU and user time in minutes, average
number of I/O operations, etc.To view information about commands being issued, one
would use the &man.lastcomm.1; utility. The
lastcomm may be used to print out commands
issued by users on specific &man.ttys.5;, for example:&prompt.root; lastcomm ls
trhodes ttyp1Would print out all known usage of the ls
by trhodes on the ttyp1 terminal.Many other useful options exist and are explained in the
&man.lastcomm.1;, &man.acct.5; and &man.sa.8; manual
pages.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/share/sgml/glossary/freebsd-glossary.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/share/sgml/glossary/freebsd-glossary.sgml
index 44dbbd8088..742a56b2fa 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/share/sgml/glossary/freebsd-glossary.sgml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/share/sgml/glossary/freebsd-glossary.sgml
@@ -1,1940 +1,1940 @@
&os; GlossaryThis glossary contains terms and acronyms used within the &os;
community and documentation.AACLACPIAMDAMLAPIAPICAPMAPOPASLATAATMACPI Machine Language
AML
Pseudocode, interpreted by a virtual machine within an
ACPI-compliant operating system, providing a
layer between the underlying hardware and the documented
interface presented to the OS.ACPI Source Language
ASL
The programming language AML is written in.Access Control List
ACL
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
ACPI
A specification which provides an abstraction of the
interface the hardware presents to the operating system, so
that the operating system should need to know nothing about
the underlying hardware to make the most of it. ACPI
evolves and supercedes the functionality provided previously by
APM, PNPBIOS and other technologies, and
provides facilities for controlling power consumption, machine
suspension, device enabling and disabling, etc.Application Programming Interface
API
A set of procedures, protocols and tools that specify the
canonical interaction of one or more program parts; how, when
and why they do work together, and what data they share or
operate on.Advanced Power Management
APM
Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller
APIC
Advanced Technology Attachment
ATA
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
ATM
Authenticated Post Office Protocol
APOP
Automatic Mount Daemon
AMD
A daemon that automatically mounts a filesystem when a file
or directory within that filesystem is accessed.BBARBINDBIOSBSDBase Address Register
BAR
The registers that determine which address range a PCI device
will respond to.Basic Input/Output System
BIOS
The definition of BIOS depends a bit on
the context. Some people refer to it as the ROM
chip with a basic set of routines to provide an interface between
software and hardware. Others refer to it as the set of routines
contained in the chip that help in bootstrapping the system. Some
might also refer to it as the screen used to configure the
boostrapping process. The BIOS is PC-specific
but other systems have something similar.Berkeley Internet Name Domain
BIND
An implementation of the DNS protocols.Berkeley Software Distribution
BSD
This is the name that the Computer Systems Research Group
(CSRG) at The University
of California at Berkeley
gave to their improvements and modifications to
AT&T's 32V &unix;.
&os; is a descendant of the CSRG work.Bikeshed BuildingA phenomenon whereby many people will give an opinion on
an uncomplicated topic, whilst a complex topic receives little
or no discussion. See the
FAQ for
the origin of the term.CCDCHAPCLIPCOFFCPUCTSCVSCarrier Detect
CD
An RS232C signal indicating that a carrier has been
detected.Central Processing Unit
CPU
Also known as the processor. This is the brain of the
computer where all calculations take place. There are a number of
different architectures with different instruction sets. Among
the more well-known are the Intel-x86 and derivatives, Sun SPARC,
PowerPC, and Alpha.Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol
CHAP
Classical IP over ATM
CLIP
Clear To Send
CTS
An RS232C signal giving the remote system
permission to send data.Common Object File Format
COFF
Concurrent Versions System
CVS
DDACDDBDESDHCPDNSDSDTDSRDTRDVMRPDiscretionary Access Control
DAC
Data Encryption Standard
DES
Data Set Ready
DSR
Data Terminal Ready
DTR
Debugger
DDB
Differentiated System Description Table
DSDT
Distance-Vector Multicast Routing Protocol
DVMRP
Domain Name System
DNS
The system that converts humanly readable hostnames (i.e.,
mail.example.net) to Internet addresses and vice versa.Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol
DHCP
A protocol that dynamically assigns IP addresses to a computer
(host) when it requests one from the server. The address assignment
is called a lease.EECOFFELFESPEncapsulated Security Payload
ESP
Executable and Linking Format
ELF
Extended COFF
ECOFF
FFADTFATFAT16FTPFile Allocation Table
FAT
File Allocation Table (16-bit)
FAT16
File Transfer Protocol
FTP
A member of the family of high-level protocols implemented
on top of TCP which can be used to transfer
files over a TCP/IP network.Fixed ACPI Description Table
FADT
GGUIGiantThe name of a mutual exclusion mechanism
(a sleep mutex) that protects a large
set of kernel resources. Although a simple locking mechanism
was adequate in the days where a machine might have only
a few dozen processes, one networking card, and certainly
only one processor, in current times it is an unacceptable
performance bottleneck. &os; developers are actively working
to replace it with locks that protect individual resources,
which will allow a much greater degree of parallelism for
both single-processor and multi-processor machines.Graphical User Interface
GUI
A system where the user and computer interact with
graphics.HHTMLHUPHangUp
HUP
HyperText Markup Language
HTML
The markup language used to create web pages.II/OIASLIMAPIPIPFWIPPIPv4IPv6ISPIP Firewall
IPFW
IP Version 4
IPv4
The IP protocol version 4, which uses 32 bits
for addressing. This version is still the most widely used, but it
is slowly being replaced with IPv6.IP Version 6
IPv6
The new IP protocol. Invented because the
address space in IPv4 is running out. Uses 128
bits for addressing.Input/Output
I/O
Intel’s ASL compiler
IASL
Intel’s compiler for converting ASL into
AML.Internet Message Access Protocol
IMAP
Internet Printing Protocol
IPP
Internet Protocol
IP
The packet transmitting protocol that is the basic protocol on
the Internet. Originally developed at the U.S. Department of
Defense and an extremly important part of the TCP/IP
stack. Without the Internet Protocol, the Internet
would not have become what it is today. For more information, see
RFC 791.Internet Service Provider
ISP
A company that provides access to the Internet.KKAMEJapanese for turtle, the term KAME is used
in computing circles to refer to the KAME Project, who work on
an implementation of IPv6.KDCKLDKSEKVAKbpsKernel &man.ld.1;
KLD
Kernel Scheduler Entities
KSE
A kernel-supported threading system. See the project home page
for further details.Kernel Virtual Address
KVA
Key Distribution Center
KDC
Kilo Bits Per Second
Kbps
Used to measure bandwith (how much data can pass a given
point at a specified amount of time). Alternates to the Kilo
prefix include Mega, Giga, Tera, and so forth.LLANLORLPDLine Printer Daemon
LPD
Local Area Network
LAN
A network used on a local area, e.g. office, home, or so forth.
Lock Order Reversal
LOR
The &os; kernel uses a number of resource locks to
arbitrate contention for those resources. A run-time
lock diagnostic system found in &os.current; kernels
(but removed for releases), called &man.witness.4;,
detects the potential for deadlocks due to locking errors.
(&man.witness.4; is actually slightly conservative, so
it is possible to get false positives.) A true positive
report indicates that if you were unlucky, a deadlock would
have happened here.True positive LORs tend to get fixed quickly, so
check &a.current.url; and the
LORs Seen page before posting to the mailing lists.MMACMADTMFCMFP4MFSMITMLSMOTDMTAMUAMail Transfer Agent
MTA
An application used to transfer email. An
MTA has traditionally been part of the BSD
base system. Today Sendmail is included in the base system, but
- there are many other MTAs, such as postfix,
+ there are many other MTAs, such as postfix,
qmail and Exim.Mail User Agent
MUA
An application used by users to display and write email.Mandatory Access Control
MAC
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT
Merge From Current
MFC
To merge functionality or a patch from the -CURRENT
branch to another, most often -STABLE.Merge From Perforce
MFP4
To merge functionality or a patch from the Perforce
repository to the -CURRENT branch.Merge From Stable
MFS
In the normal course of FreeBSD development, a change will
be committed to the -CURRENT branch for testing before being
merged to -STABLE. On rare occasions, a change will go into
-STABLE first and then be merged to -CURRENT.This term is also used when a patch is merged from -STABLE
to a security branch.Message Of The Day
MOTD
A message, usually shown on login, often used to
distribute information to users of the system.Multi-Level Security
MLS
Multiple APIC Description Table
MADT
NNATNDISulatorNFSNTFSNTPNetwork Address Translation
NAT
Network File System
NFS
New Technology File System
NTFS
A filesystem developed by Microsoft and available in its
New Technology operating systems, such as
&windows2k;, &windowsnt; and &windowsxp;.Network Time Protocol
NTP
OOBEODMROSOn-Demand Mail Relay
ODMR
Operating System
OS
A set of programs, libraries and tools that provide access to
the hardware resources of a computer. Operating systems range
today from simplistic designs that support only one program
running at a time, accessing only one device to fully
multi-user, multi-tasking and multi-process systems that can
serve thousands of users simultaneously, each of them running
dozens of different applications.Overtaken By Events
OBE
Indicates a suggested change (such as a Problem Report
or a feature request) which is no longer relevant or
applicable due to such things as later changes to &os;,
changes in networking standards, the affected hardware
having since become obsolete, and so forth.Pp4PAEPAMPAPPCPCNSFDPDFPIDPOLAPOPPOP3PPDPPPPPPoAPPPoEPPP over ATM
PPPoA
PPP over Ethernet
PPPoE
PRPXEPassword Authentication Protocol
PAP
PerforceA source code control product made by
Perforce Software
which is more advanced than CVS. Although not open source, it use
is free of charge to open-source projects such as &os;.Some &os; developers use a Perforce repository as a staging
area for code that is considered too experimental for the
-CURRENT branch.Personal Computer
PC
Personal Computer Network File System Daemon
PCNFSD
Physical Address Extensions
PAE
A method of enabling access to up to 64 GB of RAM on
systems which only physically have a 32-bit wide address space
(and would therefore be limited to 4 GB without PAE).Pluggable Authentication Modules
PAM
Point-to-Point Protocol
PPP
Pointy HatA mythical piece of headgear, much like a
dunce cap, awarded to any &os;
committer who breaks the build, makes revision numbers
go backwards, or creates any other kind of havoc in
the source base. Any committer worth his or her salt
will soon accumulate a large collection. The usage is
(almost always?) humorous.Portable Document Format
PDF
Post Office Protocol
POP
Post Office Protocol Version 3
POP3
PostScript Printer Description
PPD
Preboot eXecution Environment
PXE
Principle Of Least Astonishment
POLA
As &os; evolves, changes visible to the user should be
kept as unsurprising as possible. For example, arbitrarily
rearranging system startup variables in
/etc/defaults/rc.conf violates
POLA. Developers consider
POLA when contemplating user-visible
system changes.Problem Report
PR
A description of some kind of problem that has been
found in either the &os; source or documentation. See
Writing &os; Problem Reports.Process ID
PID
A number, unique to a particular process on a system,
which identifies it and allows actions to be taken against it.Project EvilThe working title for the NDISulator,
written by Bill Paul, who named it referring to how awful
it is (from a philosophical standpoint) to need to have
something like this in the first place. The
NDISulator is a special compatibility
module to allow Microsoft Windows™ NDIS miniport
network drivers to be used with &os;/i386. This is usually
the only way to use cards where the driver is closed-source.
See src/sys/compat/ndis/subr_ndis.c.RRARAIDRAMRDRFCRISCRPCRS232CRTSRandom Access Memory
RAM
Received Data
RD
Recommended Standard 232C
RS232C
A standard for communications between serial devices.Reduced Instruction Set Computer
RISC
Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
RAID
Remote Procedure Call
RPC
repocopyRepository CopyA direct copying of files within the CVS repository.Without a repocopy, if a file needed to be copied or
moved to another place in the repository, the committer would
run cvs add to put the file in its new
location, and then cvs rm on the old file
if the old copy was being removed.The disadvantage of this method is that the history
(i.e. the entries in the CVS logs) of the file would not be
copied to the new location. As the &os; Project considers
this history very useful, a repository copy is often used
instead. This is a process where one of the repository meisters
will copy the files directly within the repository, rather than
using the &man.cvs.1; program.Request For Comments
RFC
A set of documents defining Internet standards, protocols, and
so forth. See
www.rfc-editor.org.
Also used as a general term when someone has a suggested change
and wants feedback.Request To Send
RTS
Router Advertisement
RA
SSCISCSISGSMBSMPSMTPSMTP AUTHSSHSTRSMTP Authentication
SMTP AUTH
Server Message Block
SMB
Signal Ground
SG
An RS232 pin or wire that is the ground reference
for the signal.Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SMTP
Secure Shell
SSH
Small Computer System Interface
SCSI
Suspend To RAM
STR
Symmetric MultiProcessor
SMP
System Control Interrupt
SCI
TTCPTCP/IPTDTFTPTGTTSCTicket-Granting Ticket
TGT
Time Stamp Counter
TSC
A profiling counter internal to modern &pentium; processors
that counts core frequency clock ticks.Transmission Control Protocol
TCP
A protocol that sits on top of (e.g.) the IP
protocol and guarantees that packets are delivered in a reliable,
ordered, fashion.Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
TCP/IP
The term for the combination of the TCP
protocol running over the IP protocol. Much of
the Internet runs over TCP/IP.Transmitted Data
TD
Trivial FTP
TFTP
UUDPUFS1UFS2UIDURLUSBUniform Resource Locator
URL
Unix File System Version 1
UFS1
Unix File System Version 2
UFS2
Universal Serial Bus
USB
User ID
UID
A unique number assigned to each user of a computer,
by which the resources and permissions assigned to that
user can be identified.User Datagram Protocol
UDP
VVPNVirtual Private Network
VPN