cops security report questions

[Ken Weaverling]

Just got the latest cops package and installed it on my system. It pointed
out quite a few things, some of which I have questions on why...

First, the prelims. The systems are AT&T Sys V/386 boxes. These boxes are
NOT on the net yet, the account I'm posting on is a student account at the
U of Del. (So if I have a glaring problem, don't think you can exploit it! :-)

1) Disk devices world readable. I can understand why this is a problem. I
   have already changed this but was wondering why the manufacturer (Prime)
   shipped it with the disk devices as 644...

2) "uudecode creates set uid files" OK, I checked this and it will create
    a 4755 file, but owned by me. (uudecode is NOT setuid to uucp). Why is
    this a problem? I got source to uude/encode from uunet a year or two
    ago and compiled it. It isn't a vendor supplied program on this box.

3)  /usr/spool/uucp and /usr/spool/uucppublic are 777... OK, this looks
    weird even to a thick person like me. But this is how it was shipped.
    Is there a reason to the madness here?  All programs that I can think
    of that need to get in there (uucico, uux, etc) are setuid to uucp, 
    so I see no need for it to be 777. Would changing to 775 or 770 break
    anything (I am running HDB uucp...)

I really appreciate this program. Being force to be a jack-of-all trades
(admin for UNIX, PRIMOS, MS/DOS, and MACINTOSH networks) I really appreciate
any help available. 

Thanks for any help (and happy World War III -- let's pray it's a quick
and not too bloody one and that some good will come out of this in the end...)

-- 
>>>---> Ken Weaverling  >>>---->  weave at brahms.udel.edu