[Mailman-Developers] Doubt about security

skip at pobox.com skip at pobox.com
Mon Jan 5 19:12:31 CET 2009


    Mark> The answer is to use strong passwords, and if you are really
    Mark> concerned, don't advertise any lists and remove Mailman's
    Mark> cgi-bin/create wrapper so lists can't be created from the web, or
    Mark> alternatively just don't set site admin or list creator passwords
    Mark> or remove data/adm.pw and data/creator.pw to remove those set
    Mark> previously.

I suspect the default should be to not expose those things.  I wasn't even
aware that list creation through the web was possible.  Based on the
extremely novice questions I see posted to mailman-users on occasion I
suspect many potential Mailman admins are unaware of this as well.  I fear
those admins are also the ones most likely to not create strong passwords.

Maybe all that's necessary is to install cgi-bin/create as
cgi-bin/create.disabled by default, set its permissions to not allow
execution and add a note to the installation docs about the consequences of
through-the-web list creation and how to set it up.

Skip



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