The bash history file security problem mentioned in http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/18109.html also applies to Red Hat: The users' (including root's) .bash_history files are created World readable. I consider this a potentially high security problem. A proposed fix: Include empty .bash_history files in the "skel" and "rootfiles" RPM packages and make the files non-World readable. An other solution might be to patch bash so that it doesn't create World readble history files.
Please read that article again... it talks about Cobalt misconfiguring their Cube product, this is not a problem with Red Hat Linux... To verify, add new user (useradd foo), change to that user (su - foo), type in some commands (ls -l), logout, change to that user again (su - foo), look at .bash_history: -rw------- 1 foo foo 6 Mar 15 02:27 .bash_history As well as this quote from the articel which you posted, but failed to read: "He was unable to find similar exposure on sites running the Linux OS that did not use the Cobalt RaQ." /Seva
This problem does not exist in Red Hat Linux 5.9 beta, but I was able to determine that on a number of 5.2 boxes, ~root/.bash_history is world readable. However, I'm not sure it merits a security release. Cristian, what is your opinion of the situation?
This is not a security issue -- the commands that root runs are available in ps listings while they are running anyway.