SMRSH(8)SMRSH(8)NAMEsmrsh - restricted shell for sendmail
SYNOPSISsmrsh-c command
DESCRIPTION
The smrsh program is intended as a replacement for sh for use in the
``prog'' mailer in sendmail(8) configuration files. It sharply limits
the commands that can be run using the ``|program'' syntax of sendmail
in order to improve the over all security of your system. Briefly,
even if a ``bad guy'' can get sendmail to run a program without going
through an alias or forward file, smrsh limits the set of programs that
he or she can execute.
Briefly, smrsh limits programs to be in a single directory, by default
/usr/lib/sendmail.d/bin/ allowing the system administrator to choose
the set of acceptable commands, and to the shell builtin commands
``exec'', ``exit'', and ``echo''. It also rejects any commands with
the characters ``', `<', `>', `;', `$', `(', `)', `\r' (carriage
return), or `\n' (newline) on the command line to prevent ``end run''
attacks. It allows ``||'' and ``&&'' to enable commands like: ``"|exec
/usr/local/bin/filter || exit 75"''
Initial pathnames on programs are stripped, so forwarding to
``/usr/bin/vacation'', ``/usr/bin/vacation'',
``/home/server/mydir/bin/vacation'', and ``vacation'' all actually for‐
ward to `/usr/lib/sendmail.d/bin/vacation''.
System administrators should be conservative about populating the
/usr/lib/sendmail.d/bin/ directory. For example, a reasonable addi‐
tions is vacation(1), and the like. No matter how brow-beaten you may
be, never include any shell or shell-like program (such as perl(1)) in
the /usr/lib/sendmail.d/bin/ directory. Note that this does not
restrict the use of shell or perl scripts in the /usr/lib/send‐
mail.d/bin/ directory (using the ``#!'' syntax); it simply disallows
execution of arbitrary programs. Also, including mail filtering pro‐
grams such as procmail(1) is a very bad idea. procmail(1) allows users
to run arbitrary programs in their procmailrc(5).
COMPILATION
Compilation should be trivial on most systems. You may need to use
-DSMRSH_PATH=\"path\" to adjust the default search path (defaults to
``/bin:/usr/bin'') and/or -DSMRSH_CMDDIR=\"dir\" to change the default
program directory (defaults to ``/usr/lib/sendmail.d/bin/'').
FILES
/usr/lib/sendmail.d/bin/ - default directory for restricted programs on
SuSE Linux
SEE ALSOsendmail(8)
$Date: 2004/08/06 03:55:35 $ SMRSH(8)
