Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!
Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!
-
Congratulations strongm on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!
Securing ROOT
- Thread starter june54
- Start date
RodKnowlton
MIS
- Apr 26, 2000
- 1,005
If you prefer to spend lots of money for software that's not likely to have been as thoroughly tested OR audited, there's always PowerBroker (or will there be? - another open source advantage is a lack of dependence on a vendor's continued existence).
- Rod
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+
A Simple Code for Posting on the Web
- Rod
IBM Certified Advanced Technical Expert pSeries and AIX 5L
CompTIA Linux+
CompTIA Security+
A Simple Code for Posting on the Web
Ignoring the proseltyzer 
AIX has a fair amount of such protection built-in. Edit a user via the SMIT interface of your choice, and you should note that there is a "Roles" item, that permits you to grant a user the ability to perform various root-like tasks without having to be root.
I make no warranty as to how easy or useful this functionality will be as I've never used it.
That being said, sudo is about as standard in the unix world as gzip and openssh. If you are using either of those products, you should be aware that they too are open-source.
I'm not aware of any auditing agency that considers sudo to be a security risk.
AIX has a fair amount of such protection built-in. Edit a user via the SMIT interface of your choice, and you should note that there is a "Roles" item, that permits you to grant a user the ability to perform various root-like tasks without having to be root.
I make no warranty as to how easy or useful this functionality will be as I've never used it.
That being said, sudo is about as standard in the unix world as gzip and openssh. If you are using either of those products, you should be aware that they too are open-source.
I'm not aware of any auditing agency that considers sudo to be a security risk.
- Status