canonical / canonical/authd

Feature: make the local group prefix configurable for improved security

Open
#1,114 7 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub
Dominant language
Go
Stars
308
Forks
41
Avg merge
2d 4h
Merged PRs (30d)
58

Description

### Is there an existing request for this feature?

- [x] I have searched the existing issues and found none that matched mine

### Describe the feature

In large(ish) organizations like mine, many people may have access to Entra/IAM/etc and different people may have access to Linux machines. Allowing an Entra-ID (or similar) admin to add users to the linux-sudo group, is allowing them to grant root privileges to others or themselves. I feel this is a security risk. At the time I'm writing this, this behavior is hardcoded in `main`.

By the way, I chose to make this a public issue because the documentation is quite open about this in fact being an intended feature.

### Describe the ideal solution

Ideally I would get rid of this feature altogether, but it seems it's an intended one. So my suggestion is to at least making it configurable so it can be turned off, and I would prefer to have this behavior turned off by default.

### Alternatives and current workarounds

The only thing I can think of is to proactively add groups called "linux-sudo" in whatever provider people are using, and make it so nobody can add users to them.

### System information and logs

Not applicable

### Relevant information

Not applicable

### Double check your logs

- [x] I have redacted any sensitive information from the logs

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reading the hardcoded local group prefix behavior in main and the issue discussion about its security implications. The work is done when that behavior can be configured, can be disabled by default as requested, and the resulting behavior is covered by the project's relevant checks.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
go
Domain
authentication, authorization, security
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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