The sudo fraud | Hacker News Reader

The sudo fraud

ilya-sher.org

12 pointsilyash22 comments

Even with unlimited, no-password required sudo, it provides a valuable addition: audit logging.

every command you run with sudo is logged, along with the user than ran it. On GCP each end user is provisioned a separate login user, and logs can be shipped to Stackdriver Logging where they cannot be modified. This makes access really verifiable.

disclaimer: I have no idea about Linux auditing: If you 'sudo -s' (or one of its friends) does the log still record the commands done in the "root shell"?

No, but you have a record of the user who typed 'sudo -s' which gives you an idea of where to start asking questions.

Seems silly. Why create a pain in the ass for every command, instead of enabling auditing? Of course you should log which ssh credential started the session.

I don't disagree with your thesis here, but "for every command" is substantially overstating the case.

There's one very good reason to use sudo instead of being in a root shell: audit trails. sudo logs its invocations. While you could always see who is becoming root, you'd have to look through root's shell history to see what's happening (which isn't hard to purge - one of the many reasons a remote syslog server may be called for).

Why not enable auditing?

Why enable auditing when you already get the information you want with your current setup?

Because sudo only works when you sudo, it's just one more thing to type/mistype. Do you really want to pay your sysadmin to sometimes run sudo and sometimes have logging? Or would you rather automate it and get 100% logging?

Who's implementing it and why would it cost me less than paying a sysadmin to use sudo?

Sudo su

> Is it really simpler for you to type sudo all the time rather than having one terminal tab open with a root shell?

Yeesh. Privileged work I do is typically interleaved with commands that do not need to be privileged. Actual security considerations aside, I would rather have the guard rails afforded me by a normal user account for things that don't have some specific reason to be privileged.

Technically, the main point for sudo is allowing non-root users access to a limited set of commands. That said, if you needed this, you should be using an actual MAC system.

sudo predates most (all?) Unix MAC solutions. Nowadays, PolKit can do most of its job in a more fine-grained way.

I still prefer sudo to PolKit. The syntax used in the sudo configuration file is quite error prone (which is why it is recommended to use visudo, as a way to not lock yourself out due to an invalid configuration), I still prefer that to PolKit's XML .policy files. Recent version can use JavaScript instead, but as far as I am concerned, it's equally bad.

The argument-via-AWS probably indicts sudo, but it threatens in addition to indict any sort of command line access to production hosts. Why are you fixing your server with a typed command? Why not just kill it and spin up another?

On my severs I often use “sudo -s“ in a separate tmux window. I've changed my PS1 to give me a red prompt for root. Over the years I never had a situation where I accidentally did something stupid as root.

It is so good to have visual clues. I do something similar, using..

    red = root
    yellow = others (or ssh)
    green = me

Plus when I'm SSH'ing to a remote box, it usually defaults to white prompt

I check in PROMPT_COMMAND whether the current terminal can sudo without a password and add a colored note to my prompt if so.

The only thing I agreed was: "If you manage a server, use root". sudo is a good way to let unprivileged users to execute a restricted set of commands, it's easy to learn and setup.

===8<== Update 2016-07-09 05:58 UTC

Just to be clear: Please note it’s filed under the “Rant” category. The post has some valid points but don’t take it too seriously. Use your best judgment to decide which parts of the above apply to your situation. ===8<===

This seems relevant: http://www.garyshood.com/root/

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