Re: make gnome listen on localhost:*

[Elliot Lee <sopwith redhat com>]

On Wed, 14 Jun 2000, Chris Evans wrote:

> On a general note, security needs to be approached with a
> functionality to security risk tradeoff. In this instance, disabling
> GNOME's libORBit listening inet sockets is blatantly the thing to do.
> You kill a moderate risk and 99%+ of people won't notice any change in
> behaviour.

What percent is enough? Or do you just hate ORBit? ;-)

For example, we could disable X server network access as well, requiring a
config file change to use it, and probably 99% of desktop users wouldn't
notice. But since you and I both likely happen to be in the set of people
who do use this feature, we would both protest against doing this.

The reason I hate the suggested type of solution is because it is a hack
that only works for a very special set of apps, and will ultimately cause
conflicts with valid uses.

A proper firewall setup will catch everything, including apps that don't
allow controlling their network usage individually. Users may not know a
lot about the details of firewalling, but anyone who thinks they will have
problems answering questions such as "Do you plan on running any network
servers?" in their Linux install.

This problem goes beyond ORBit - it is going to come up more and more as
the network becomes central to computing. I'm not anxious to put in stupid
temporary hacks so people can feel good about avoiding a proper solution.

Is anyone interesting in coming up with "the proper solution" that sets a
safe default config and makes it easy to make changes? I might be
interested in helping with such a thing.

-- Elliot
"Moron of the week" for four years running