Software Distributor (SD-UX) Administration Guide HP-UX 11i v1, 11i v2, and 11i v3 (762797-001, March 2014)

SD-UX Internal Authentication
This section discusses the following topics:
• SD-UX Credentials
Controllers Run with the User’s Credentials and Privileges◦
◦ Agents Run with the System’s Identity
• Security Between Hosts: The Shared Secrets File
SD-UX security does not replace DCE Security. It seeks to provide a usable protection scheme
based on the assumption that there is no hostile, concerted effort by users to do damage.
Much of the DCE security functionality used by SD-UX comes from the DCE Runtime Library that is
included in SD-UX. This library provides DCE RPC capability and some of the DCE Security Services
required to support ACLs.
Without full DCE Security Services, it is impossible to reliably prove the identity of a user making
an SD-UX RPC call; even if the source and destination of the RPC call is local. The RPC identifies
only the network address of the calling client.
SD-UX Credentials
A key to SD-UX security is determining which users are allowed to be involved in particular
operations. In SD-UX internal authentication, your HP-UX uid, gid, and host name are used to
establish your identity. The fact that the SD-UX controller runs with an effective uid of root (because
the controller is a setuid-root program) does not affect your identity, which is obtained from
your real uid.
When you start an RPC (as an SD-UX controller), a structure describing your identity accompanies
each call to an agent; the controller sends the user and group name of the person invoking the
RPC, as well as the host name of the system on which it is running (in DCE, called the realm).
This structure is called your credentials. Credentials consist of:
• user (principal) name
The user (or host system, for agents making RPCs to other agents) who is originating the RPC
call.
• Group name
The user’s primary group.
• Realm or local Host
The user’s host name.
The user’s credentials are passed in the RPC parameters. The agent receiving the RPC uses this
information to compare authentication credentials.
Controllers Run with the User’s Credentials and Privileges
SD-UX controller programs such as swinstall or swremove operate with the privileges of the
user who invokes them. The agent ensures that the user has the required permissions on the object
by looking at the object’s ACL. If permissions are not granted, the operation fails.
A controller may be run by anyone on the system, but its actions are restricted (based on permissions
granted in various object ACLs). SD-UX agents always verify that user-requested operations are
authorized before performing them.
158 SD-UX Security