Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@×××.net>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Re: Re: GLEP 38: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:28:49
Message-Id: pan.2005.06.29.09.59.08.152558@cox.net
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: GLEP 38: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project by christian.hartmann@email.de
1 christian.hartmann posted <790333825@×××.de>, excerpted below, on Wed, 29
2 Jun 2005 09:54:35 +0200:
3
4 > Lance Albertson:
5 >> > I'm just getting ansty about all these new people we're bringing on
6 >> > and the security behind it. Thats my main concern at this point, not
7 >> > whether your work is more or less than a regular developer.
8 >
9 > Andrea Barisani:
10 >> Seriously security_wise and admin_wise I don't see shell access useful
11 >> neither appropriate imho.
12 >> Btw how many forums moderators are we talking about?
13 >
14 > I know what you're talking about. I usually don't like to give ppl shell
15 > access to boxes I'm in charge of. I'm kinda paranoid on this one. ;) But
16 > it's just about 10 more accounts. Knowing that toucan and all the other
17 > infrastructure servers are pretty locked down and knowing that most of us
18 > are really aware of security (keeping your ssh-keys in a secure place; use
19 > stong passwords; lock down boxes; don't run weird scripts on servers,
20 > etc.) I don't see a problem here. We are very careful about whom to give
21 > the permissions to moderate the forum. Before granting them access to
22 > moderate (as in moving, deleting, editing etc) the forum we have a close
23 > look at the ppl so that we can make sure they don't do something nasty
24 > with their permissions.
25
26 I don't blame anyone for being antsy about a whole group getting new
27 access at one point, I'd be antsy too. However, keep in mind that these
28 /are/ /global/ moderators we are talking about, that have demonstrated
29 their worth to Gentoo over multiple forums over a long enough time to have
30 already been made /global/ mods. CVS access is an entirely different
31 story, of course, but for general shell access -- it should be pretty
32 clear by now what their intentions are on Gentoo, and given their position
33 in /very/ public view as Gentoo global mods, IMO they could do /far/ more
34 damage to Gentoo in a few minutes or hours on the forums than they could
35 with a single shell account on a single machine (assuming proper internal
36 firewalling between that box and others, and proper administrative
37 supervision of a box with that many folks having shell accounts on it) in
38 any case.
39
40 Not only do we trust them with the highly publicly visible position of
41 global mods, but now we are making them staff. If there's any reasonable
42 doubt security-wise, there's something wrong with the whole situation we
43 find ourselves in in the first place.
44
45 Also, as someone else pointed out in the earlier thread, in a year, when
46 they get full Foundation voting rights, they'll need shell accounts
47 anyway, to be able to properly vote, unless of course some other
48 arrangements are to be made by then. That does give us a year to work
49 with on activating the accounts, true, but they've got to be activated
50 sooner or later, and if we're already trusting them to the degree we are
51 in the global mod position and now as staff, it might as well be now.
52
53 All that said, the more people with accounts on a box, the lower the "mean
54 time before failure", just in general terms, even if each individual is
55 100% trusted. That's just the way things work. So, yeah, ten new in what
56 amounts to one shot... it SHOULD be giving people a bit of the shivers.
57 If it's not, those folks must either not be concerned about security, or
58 they've lost their edge.
59
60 All IMO of course.
61
62 --
63 Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
64 "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
65 and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in
66 http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html
67
68
69 --
70 gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list