[Zope] LocatFS Security

Joachim Werner joe@iuveno-net.de
Wed, 1 Aug 2001 19:56:49 +0200


> Who does LocalFS access the actual directorys on the file system as?
Whoever
> zope is runnin as? So if it's root it has root access?

Zope never starts as root. It either runs as a dedicated user (-u option in
the start script) or as nobody. In both cases, LocalFS ist still really
dangerous if not handled with care. Any user who is allowed to add LocalFS
instances can access any file the Zope user has permissions for. That means
that even "nobody" can be a problem if your Apache webserver runs as nobody,
too.

The only way to make the use of LocalFS more or less secure is running Zope
as a dedicated user that can only write-access the var directory in the Zope
instance and read the rest of the Zope instance, but has no other rights on
the machine.

Cheers

Joachim