6.2.13 Ensure users' .netrc Files are not group or world accessible (Scored)
Profile Applicability
Level 1 - Server Level 1 - Workstation
Description
While the system administrator can establish secure permissions for users' .netrc
files, the users can easily override these.
Rationale
.netrc
files may contain unencrypted passwords that may be used to attack other systems.
Audit
Run the following script and verify no results are returned:
#!/bin/bash for dir in `cat /etc/passwd | egrep -v '(root|sync|halt|shutdown)' | awk -F: '($7 != "/usr/sbin/nologin") { print $6 }'`; do for file in $dir/.netrc; do if [ ! -h "$file" -a -f "$file" ]; then fileperm=`ls -ld $file | cut -f1 -d" "` if [ `echo $fileperm | cut -c5 ` != "-" ]; then echo "Group Read set on $file" fi if [ `echo $fileperm | cut -c6 ` != "-" ]; then echo "Group Write set on $file" fi if [ `echo $fileperm | cut -c7 ` != "-" ]; then echo "Group Execute set on $file" fi if [ `echo $fileperm | cut -c8 ` != "-" ]; then echo "Other Read set on $file" fi if [ `echo $fileperm | cut -c9 ` != "-" ]; then echo "Other Write set on $file" fi if [ `echo $fileperm | cut -c10 ` != "-" ]; then echo "Other Execute set on $file" fi fi done done
Remediation
Making global modifications to users' files without alerting the user community can result in unexpected outages and unhappy users. Therefore, it is recommended that a monitoring policy be established to report user .netrc
file permissions and determine the action to be taken in accordance with site policy.
Notes
While the complete removal of .netrc
files is recommended if any are required on the system secure permissions must be applied.