rtools were deemed almost unused 15 years ago...

[Jeremie Le Hen]

On Sat, Jun 24, 2017 at 10:29 PM, Jeremie Le Hen <jlh at freebsd.org> wrote:
> So the first step was to create a port with FreeBSD rcmds, here we
> are!  But I need some eyes to vet it:
> https://reviews.freebsd.org/D11345

The port has been submitted and RCMDS are disabled by default from the
base system.

See you in a month for the removal!

-- Jeremie

>
> Thanks.
> -- Jeremie
>
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 12:25 PM, Jeremie Le Hen <jlh at freebsd.org> wrote:
>> Hey folks,
>>
>> I remember when I was still barely out of my teenagehood, people were
>> mostly using ssh/scp while rtools (rsh, rlogin, ... for the
>> youngsters) were left in place as a courtesy for legacy production
>> systems still relying it on them.
>>
>> Fast forward to 2017 (so yes, 15 years later), stack-clash [1] sorely
>> reminds us that suid binaries are an attack surface. I don't even need
>> to mention that it's a healthy engineering practice to remove unused
>> code, both from a maintenance and security perspective.
>>
>> Therefore, I hereby propose to remove rtools from the base system.  I
>> acknowledge this will likely cause troubles for a handful of people
>> who are still relying on it for good or bad reasons. But the flipside
>> is that the attack surface of millions of FreeBSD installed out there
>> will be reduced.
>>
>> The proposed roadmap is:
>> - disable from the build on head and let it soak for one month
>> - remove rtools from the base.
>>
>> What do you guys think?  Any preferred color for the bikeshed? :)
>>
>>
>>
>> [1] https://www.qualys.com/2017/06/19/stack-clash/stack-clash.txt
>> --
>> Jeremie Le Hen
>> jlh at FreeBSD.org
>
>
>
> --
> Jeremie Le Hen
> jlh at FreeBSD.org



-- 
Jeremie Le Hen
jlh at FreeBSD.org