[Dovecot] [PATCH] Support for GSSAPI SASL Mechanism

pod at herald.ox.ac.uk pod at herald.ox.ac.uk
Wed Oct 19 17:21:45 EEST 2005


>>>>> "TS" == Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> writes:

    TS> In any case login/master processes wouldn't have to know anything
    TS> about GSSAPI there, they'd just forward parameters from
    TS> dovecot-auth blindly (I think master already does?).

I'm not sure it does.  I've tried handing back gssapi_qop, gssapi_max_size
and gssapi_context as extra fields but I've not obviously seen those
fields available in the imap process.

    TS> plus side there is that if there happens to be any exploitable
    TS> security holes in GSSAPI library, login process would be running
    TS> in chroot and attacker wouldn't get direct access to anyone's
    TS> mails.

Couldn't this be a downside also?  The login process would hold the user
credentials but is running as the same user as all the other
imap-login/proxy processes - if there were a way to get at the process
address space of the other processes one could steal the credentials.  I
can't decide if this is just a theoretical possibility or a credible risk.


More information about the dovecot mailing list