Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!ukma!uflorida!haven!trantor.umd.edu!louie
From: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Non-root sendmail?
Message-ID: <3031@haven.umd.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 88 15:31:05 GMT
References: <164@heart-of-gold>
Sender: news@haven.umd.edu
Reply-To: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 14

sendmail runs as root for the rather obvious reason that it needs to bind
a socket to a restricted port number (25 == SMTP).  Before sendmail exec()'s
any processes, it does a setuid() to UID 1, which is daemon.  None of the
virus processes running on our system ran as root; rather they ran as
daemon.

Let's not flame sendmail for having the DEBUG command.  It actually is a
rather useful tool.  Instead of removing the DEBUG command, simply 
change the 3 lines of code that check for a particular debug flag being
set, and allowing mailing directly into programs, files and :include: lists.


Louis A. Mamakos  WA3YMH    Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU
University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming