[CLUE-Tech] Sys Admin security and user directory security

[Kevin Cullis]

Adam,

You bring up some interesting issues.  The reason that I brought it up
was a few years ago some IRS agents were looking at their neighbors tax
returns just for the sake of it, not having a good reason to look at
them, but did have the access. That's sort of the issue I'm looking at.
I guess an issue is not letting root READ the files versus being able to
access the directory where the file resides.

Understand, this is not a critical issue, but one of assessing the
capability and policies which need to be considered to warrant this
level of security and what would need to be planned now in case it was
needed.  In addition, there is, ahem, a PHB reason: if you were the CIO
of a company, would you want everyone in the organization to know your
salary if the sysadmin could look at the info (barring any public
disclosure by Federal requirements)? 

It sounds like a non-Linux/low tech solution would be needed: Zip disks
like you said and delete all files off of the hard drive.

Thanks for the comments.

Kevin

Adam_Bultman at gmx.net wrote:
> 
> I had a beautifully orchestrated email last nhight that I didn't send.
> Anyway, I'll re-create a thumbnail version:
> 
> If you take root from root, you aren't root anymore.  The sysadmin needs
> access to EVERYTHING.  You take that away, and you can't do your job.  I need
> ready access to everyone's /home/, /var/spool/mail, etc. If I didn't, I
> wouldn't have realized that /var/ was at 95 percent because of two users with 400 MB
> mail spools.  As well, I wouldn't know that /home/ was filling up with misc.
> graphics stuff.  Same goes for windows-- where is 33 GB going on this RAID ?
>  oh, well!
> 
> Anyway, if you don't want root in your stuff, encrypt it, or don't keep it
> on there.  This guy I worked with did this:
> 1. Encrypt data
> 2. Put data on zip disk, remove from hard drive.
> 3. Put zip disks in locked cabinet.
> 
> There is NOTHING this person did that required that.  I didn't even lock my
> machine.  there was no reason to, I had nothing on my box but PCanywhere, and
> winamp.
> 
> Oh, well.  If you REALLY don't want the sysadmin to read your files, don't
> put a .log ending on it, and put it in clf format.
> 
> adam