Re: [SLUG] Just how much security does chroot'ing services give you? R eal world examples?

From: Backward Thinker (backwardthinker@juno.com)
Date: Tue Jun 24 2003 - 18:02:02 EDT


> Properly set permissions don't protect against access by root.
> Most services you would desire to protect by chroot()ing them
> run as root.

If your service is running as root, then running in a chroot jail does
not buy you very much. Root can break out of a chroot jail fairly
trivially by making a few chroot and chdir calls of its own. That's
why it's important to make sure your service drops root priveledges.

I suppose you might be able to get away with it as long as you don't
have any compilers, or low-level interpreted language engines (perl,
python), and no way for attackers to ftp out or whatever to bring in
their own binaries, but even still, nature will find a way :). If
your service is capable of dropping root priveledges, it needs to do
so, because the only thing chrooting a process running as root gets
you is a little time, and a false sense of security.

~ Daniel Jarboe

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