rtools were deemed almost unused 15 years ago...

[Jeremie Le Hen]

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

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