[Zope-PTK] RE: Superuser ownership (was "Adding LoginManager at the root")

Tres Seaver tseaver@digicool.com
Tue, 16 May 2000 15:13:31 -0400


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phillip J. Eby [mailto:pje@telecommunity.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2000 12:58 PM
> To: Tres Seaver; Kevin Dangoor
> Cc: zope-dev@zope.org; Zope-PTK@zope.org
> Subject: Superuser ownership (was "Adding LoginManager at the root")
> 
> 
> At 11:25 AM 5/16/00 -0400, Tres Seaver wrote:
> >
> >Hmm, LoginManager might be able to exploit the "revert to unowned"
> >behavior of objects belonging to former users:
> >
> > * Create a temporary user temporarily;
> >
> > * Assign it to REQUEST.AUTHENTICATED_USER;
> >
> > * Construct the DTML Methods;
> >
> > * Delete the user.
> >
> >Oops, nope, this still won't work, because then the 
> superuser won't be
> >able to call those DTML Methods to add users (I think).  
> Maybe leaving
> >the "cruft" user in place is sensible, except that (for instance) it
> >presents the same kind of problem as the recent piranha mess (default
> >passwords).  We could pass in the id and password of the new manager
> >in the constructor form, I guess.
> >
> 
> Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't all this be solved by having
> objects created by the superuser always be owned by "nobody" 
> with respect
> to ownership (not owner-role)?  Wouldn't that fix this entire 
> issue (and
> many others we probably haven't thought of yet)?

Nope, because objects owned by 'nobody' would be almost useless -- the
intersection of nobody's permissions with any other users' is an empty
set.

==========================================================
Tres Seaver    Digital Creations     tseaver@digicool.com