security in samba

[David Collier-Brown]

You asked:
| In our group, we used to use 'samba' in UNIX machine (OS: AIX 4.3).
One
| day the UNIX machines were broken by a hacker, and we could not
figure 
| out how the hacker could break the system. So now we are concerned
to 
| keep using 'samba' for this security matter. 

	Alas, there's lots of ways to break security on a system
	which doesn't have **mandatory** access controls. And
	very very few systems do...

| Is there any function that samba can help for security?
| I had 'hosts allow' commands in configuration file. 
| I am also wondering if 'hosts allow' function is reliable enough for
| security.

	It protects against connections which come from the
	specified IP addresses: if the addresses are taken over
	by Mr. Hacker, it doesn't help much (;-))

	Basically, you need the following prerequisites:
	1) a protected network (e.g., a firewall and a way
	   to keep PCs and sniffers off the net)
	2) good authentication of users (via passwords) and
	   hosts (by a non-spoofed DNS)
	3) no hackers on the samba server!
	4) samba's security options.

	The latter are discussed briefly in 	
	http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book/ch06_02.html
	

	Because MS wants SMB to be friendly and backwards-compatable,
	they have to stop short of really serious security.  At the
	moment, only the military has decent security, using OSs
	with so-called "Trusted Computing Bases".

--dave (who has Trusted Solaris 7 on a test machine at home) c-b
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | Always do right. This will gratify some people
185 Ellerslie Ave.,   | and astonish the rest.        -- Mark Twain
Willowdale, Ontario   | //www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/author.html
Work: (905) 415-2849 Home: (416) 223-8968 Email: davecb at canada.sun.com