On 29 September 2016 at 20:55, Kevin Kofler <[email protected]> wrote:
> Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>> One of the reasons for it to be in /etc/shells was that various audit
>> systems failed an OS if it wasn't. [Various government and bank
>> security audit tools have rules like
>> https://www.stigviewer.com/stig/vmware_esxi_v5/2013-01-15/finding/GEN002140-ESXI5-000046
>> ] The second reason was that outside scripts would fail because chsh
>> was giving an 'error' that nologin was not there.
>
> So the audit tools REQUIRE you to add a critical security hole?
>

Yep. Been that way for multiple audit curriculum since the 1980's
(Orange Book?) ? I have seen it in everything from banks, to NATO, to
.gov, to scientific systems which were going to EU labs. I expect some
amount of it is cargo cult but it is what it is currently. I have
enough Sisyphus tasks on my plate already to add this to it.


>> While it can be argued that these are problems with other parties what
>> was happening is that they haven't been fixed in multiple years and
>> everyone who had to have anything from a PCI to a .gov audit had to go
>> put this in the file already. This basically then becomes a "do you
>> need to manually add this on the system? [Y/N]" purchase checkmark for
>> banks, credit card processors, government contractors.
>
> Nobody should ever add this at all. And most definitely not Fedora.

Well that boat sailed in 2001... so have you been removing it from
your /etc/shells in the last 15 years?

>
> The behavior the original poster pointed out:
> | - su -s /bin/bash - nologinuser (if "nologinuser" has /sbin/nologin as the
> | default shell) succeeds with /bin/bash if auth is successful [2], even
> | though man 1 su, man 8 nologin, and man 5 shells suggest that such a user
> | is a restricted user and logging in with an alternate specified shell
> | should be forbidden.
> sounds very much like a critical privilege escalation security hole to me,
> that should get a CVE and be fixed in all supported Fedora releases ASAP!

I am not sure you would get a CVE on it as much as a "It is working as
it has been working for 30 years... fix the man page"

I don't think it is privilege escalation because the person needs to
know the account with /sbin/nologins password and they need to have
shell access to the system somehow. They aren't getting root, but only
to something that a password was set AND they have been allowed access
to a shell on the system even as a different user you have other
problems already.





-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
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