Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: GLEP 38: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: GLEP 38: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[christian.hartmann]

Lance Albertson:
> > I'm just getting ansty about all these new people we're bringing
> > on and the security behind it. Thats my main concern at this point, not
> > whether your work is more or less than a regular developer.

Andrea Barisani:
> Seriously security_wise and admin_wise I don't see shell access useful neither 
> appropriate imho.
> Btw how many forums moderators are we talking about?

I know what you're talking about. I usually don't like to give ppl shell access to boxes I'm in charge of. I'm kinda paranoid on this one. ;)
But it's just about 10 more accounts. Knowing that toucan and all the other infrastructure servers are pretty locked down and knowing that most of us are really aware of security (keeping your ssh-keys in a secure place; use stong passwords; lock down boxes; don't run weird scripts on servers, etc.) I don't see a problem here. We are very careful about whom to give the permissions to moderate the forum. Before granting them access to moderate (as in moving, deleting, editing etc) the forum we have a close look at the ppl so that we can make sure they don't do something nasty with their permissions.

If anybody does something nasty on toucan just lock his/her account. - But that should be a rule for everyone having shell access.

> OK, I'm with you on the security thing (being one that would prefer a
> USE=clientonly flag, remember, tho I understand the reasons behind not
> doing it), but I DO know there's quite the occasional use for someplace to
> host scripts, patchlets, and sample config files for reference from
> forums/news/lists/irc, that I've personally found useful, that others
> would like to see as well.

That is what I had in mind. Hosting sample configuration files etc.

Andrea Barisani:
> Would devwiki (or something like that) access for hosting files be acceptable? 

It's not yet made public, is it? I don't really care about having shell access on toucan. I usually prefer hosting stuff on my server so that I've got it all in one place. All I'd like to bring up is that I'd like to have a real mailbox rather than just a mail forwarder.

> Btw how many forums moderators are we talking about?
~10

Thanks for your feedback btw,
Christian Hartmann (ian!)

ps: webmailers suck ;)


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[gentoo-dev] Re: Re: GLEP 38: Status of forum moderators in the Gentoo project

[Duncan]

christian.hartmann posted <790333825@web.de>, excerpted below,  on Wed, 29
Jun 2005 09:54:35 +0200:

> Lance Albertson:
>> > I'm just getting ansty about all these new people we're bringing on
>> > and the security behind it. Thats my main concern at this point, not
>> > whether your work is more or less than a regular developer.
> 
> Andrea Barisani:
>> Seriously security_wise and admin_wise I don't see shell access useful
>> neither appropriate imho.
>> Btw how many forums moderators are we talking about?
> 
> I know what you're talking about. I usually don't like to give ppl shell
> access to boxes I'm in charge of. I'm kinda paranoid on this one. ;) But
> it's just about 10 more accounts. Knowing that toucan and all the other
> infrastructure servers are pretty locked down and knowing that most of us
> are really aware of security (keeping your ssh-keys in a secure place; use
> stong passwords; lock down boxes; don't run weird scripts on servers,
> etc.) I don't see a problem here. We are very careful about whom to give
> the permissions to moderate the forum. Before granting them access to
> moderate (as in moving, deleting, editing etc) the forum we have a close
> look at the ppl so that we can make sure they don't do something nasty
> with their permissions.

I don't blame anyone for being antsy about a whole group getting new
access at one point, I'd be antsy too.  However, keep in mind that these
/are/ /global/ moderators we are talking about, that have demonstrated
their worth to Gentoo over multiple forums over a long enough time to have
already been made /global/ mods.  CVS access is an entirely different
story, of course, but for general shell access -- it should be pretty
clear by now what their intentions are on Gentoo, and given their position
in /very/ public view as Gentoo global mods, IMO they could do /far/ more
damage to Gentoo in a few minutes or hours on the forums than they could
with a single shell account on a single machine (assuming proper internal
firewalling between that box and others, and proper administrative
supervision of a box with that many folks having shell accounts on it) in
any case.

Not only do we trust them with the highly publicly visible position of
global mods, but now we are making them staff.  If there's any reasonable
doubt security-wise, there's something wrong with the whole situation we
find ourselves in in the first place.

Also, as someone else pointed out in the earlier thread, in a year, when
they get full Foundation voting rights, they'll need shell accounts
anyway, to be able to properly vote, unless of course some other
arrangements are to be made by then.  That does give us a year to work
with on activating the accounts, true, but they've got to be activated
sooner or later, and if we're already trusting them to the degree we are
in the global mod position and now as staff, it might as well be now.

All that said, the more people with accounts on a box, the lower the "mean
time before failure", just in general terms, even if each individual is
100% trusted.  That's just the way things work.  So, yeah, ten new in what
amounts to one shot... it SHOULD be giving people a bit of the shivers. 
If it's not, those folks must either not be concerned about security, or
they've lost their edge.

All IMO of course.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


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