libsmbclient and browsing NT and Win9X workgroups: Evidence of bad things

[Richard Sharpe]

At 02:12 PM 2/16/01 +1100, Andrew Tridgell wrote:
>> Hmmmm, if nmbd is not running when the user does an smbc_init, things are
>> not likely to be reliable ... so we must start nmbd, which means that I
>> need an SUID wrapper to start nmbd.
>
>no, you should either report an error or you should fall back to an
>alternative set of code (it is quite possible to browse without
>getbackuplist - it just requires some nasty NBT hacks).

Examples please?

>auto-launching nmbd is bad because the sysadmin might have quite
>deliberately left it off, or the config file might have some error in
>it that opens a security hole.
>
>I know that user conveniece is important, but security is more so :)

Yes, I agree ...

>Cheers, Tridge
>

Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe at ns.aus.com
Samba (Team member, www.samba.org), Ethereal (Team member, www.ethereal.com)
Contributing author, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours
Author, Special Edition, Using Samba