Due to security considerations, it might be a good idea drop root by default as 'pcap' user is being added for arpwatch anyway as "-U user" is rather clumsy to use. add autoheader, configure --with-user=pcap and there you go :-) Naturally requires some basic username hacking in the src.rpm (potential problem: both arpwatch and tcpdump require pcap user; solution: make arpwatch require tcpdump >= 3.6.2-7 or the like)
Created attachment 24490 [details] drop root by default
Question: Why can't we use nobody as a user, or does tcpdump need to write anything?
I think this would break all scripts that have: tcpdump -w file cause it is not assured, that user 'pcap' or any other default user has write access to 'file'. Or we disable the droproot, if -w is specified.. Comments?
nobody is used for dropping root the most often, so if the uid=nobody is compromised, the damage might spread too far. With pcap, this would probably be more contained. Writing and reading files work because the patch is made so the dropping of privileges is only done after opening/creating the files.
tcpdump-3.6.2-9
oops... was, the drop by default ... hmm, not yet :)
No big hurry with this I think.
should be fixed in 3.6.2-10 or newer