On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 1:54 PM, Linda Walsh
I'm not a security experts, but compilers are banned in production servers in nearly all places I know; Kernel modules are handled with 'weak-updates' and so far it's doing the job well. The closest to a compilar that we allow in production is JDK, other than that, no gcc or friends :)
---- It depends on site policy. Most security people I know say that if the person has gotten as far as being able to login to your system, it's game over -- compilers make little difference at that point.
My point exactly.
The incremental security benefit of not having compilers on a system, is minor -- NOT that I would advise putting development tools on a outward facing web server -- BUT, I'd generally advise against putting any software on it not needed for it's job, as each piece adds exponential complexity.
That's the justification not to install them - ie, the same justification not to install image processing if you don't need it. No point in adding entry vectors you don't need. A compiler, if you don't need it, is like gimp (if you don't need it) - a useless, possibly vulnerable program. But, then again, any non-suid program is uploadable by an attacker that could build programs from source if gcc was there, so, from an information security theoretical standpoint, there is absolutely no difference in the security afforded by a gcc-less system.
They got interactive shell? They can download premade binaries for your machine or attack tools not needing compilation.
You need less than an interactive shell. They got the ability to build with gcc? Then they got the ability to upload gcc itself. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org