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SMRSH(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual SMRSH(8)
NAME
smrsh - restricted shell for sendmail
SYNOPSIS
smrsh -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/libexec/sm.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'', ``/home/server/mydir/bin/vacation'', and
``vacation'' all actually forward to ``/usr/libexec/sm.bin/vacation''.
System administrators should be conservative about populating the
sm.bin directory. For example, a reasonable additions 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 sm.bin directory.
Note that this does not restrict the use of shell or perl scripts in
the sm.bin directory (using the ``#!'' syntax); it simply disallows
execution of arbitrary programs. Also, including mail filtering
programs 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/libexec/sm.bin'').
FILES
/usr/adm/sm.bin - default directory for restricted programs on most OSs
/var/adm/sm.bin - directory for restricted programs on HP UX and
Solaris
/usr/libexec/sm.bin - directory for restricted programs on FreeBSD (>=
3.3) and DragonFly BSD
SEE ALSO
sendmail(8)