On 12/28/10 3:44 AM, Stefan Sperling wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 01:28:34PM -0800, Philip Prindeville wrote:
>> On 12/27/10 11:34 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>>> On Dec 24, 2010, at 23:34, Philip Prindeville wrote:
>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, the documentation and utilities in a few places are less clear than they could be when discussing repository setup for svnserve versus svnserve+ssh versus apache.
>>>>
>>>> For instance, "svnadmin create" deposits various files there:
>>>>
>>>> conf/svnserve.conf
>>>> conf/passwd
>>>>
>>>> which are useful for svnserve... but not for Apache access.
>>> So if you're not using svnserve, just ignore those files.
>> We'd rather not have files laying around not serving a purpose...
>> especially if in some future version they start being meaningful again
>> and their contents implicitly grant some sort of access.
> The configuration files won't suddently change their purpose in a
> future version of Subversion (maybe in 2.0, but not before).
>
>> When securing a machine, you start by closing everything up, and then
>> opening up just what you need to accomplish the mission. "Closing
>> everything up" in this context would include removing unused
>> configuration files.
> I don't understand why unused configuration files would be a security risk.
>
> The important bit about security is that admins understand how to configure
> the application they're setting up. They can then configure it securely.
> I suppose your real concern is that you or others would get distracted
> by those files. Which implies a lack of understanding about how the
> system is or has been configured. I'd say the real problem here is
> documenting your setup properly and making sure everyone involved knows
> what this documentation says.
If I know that they're used only by svnserve and I'm never going to use svnserve, maybe I don't want they lying around just to svnserve will never be run (by a hacker for an exploit).
That seems pretty straigthtforward.
>> In short, ignoring the files isn't an option.
> Many UNIX-like operating systems come with configuration files in /etc
> for applications that aren't being run unless the user enables them.
> People ignore those files all the time.
Rarely are they for network services.
> In any case, you're free to simply remove configuration files that
> "svnadmin create" creates. But I don't see a point in adding an
> option for this because it doesn't seem to be a very common need.
>
> Stefan
Received on 2010-12-28 17:59:52 CET