[Python-Dev] PEP: Migrating the Python CVS to Subversion (original) (raw)

"Martin v. Löwis" martin at v.loewis.de
Fri Jul 29 23:19:04 CEST 2005


Michael Hudson wrote:

Would it work/how much risk would it be to create accounts with shell /bin/false?

It seems that the pydotorg admins are worried about such a prospect.

I believe this alone either won't work or won't be good enough (not sure which one): If you have /bin/false as login shell, and still manage to invoke /usr/bin/svnserve remotely, you can likely also invoke /usr/bin/cat /etc/passwd remotely (or download and build the root exploit via ssh).

So you would have restrict the set of valid programs to only svnserve. This is possible, but difficult to manage (AFAIK).

(still faintly bothered by ~/.subversion/auth/svn.simple/*...)

Indeed. I personally would prefer SSL client certificates. This is still tricky (where do you get the passphrase for the private key from (*)), but slightly better.

Regards, Martin

(*) In case you wonder, I'm personally using the following techniques here:



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