EVOLUTION-NINJA

Edit File: SECURITY

******************** NRPE SECURITY README ******************** TCP WRAPPER SUPPORT =================== NRPE 2.x includes native support for TCP wrappers. The older host access list directive was removed from the config file. Make sure your system supports TCP wrappers before running NRPE. Once you compile NRPE you can check to see if it has wrapper support built in by running the daemon from the command line without any arguments like this: ./nrpe --help COMMAND ARGUMENTS ================= NRPE 2.0 includes the ability for clients to supply arguments to commands which should be run. Please note that this feature should be considered a security risk, and you should only use it if you know what you're doing! ENABLING ARGUMENTS ------------------ To enable support for command argument in the daemon, you must do two things: 1. Run the configure script with the --enable-command-args option 2. Set the 'dont_blame_nrpe' directive in the NRPE config file to 1. ILLEGAL METACHARS ----------------- To help prevent some nasty things from being done by evil clients, the following metacharacters are not allowed in client command arguments: | ` & > < ' " \ [ ] { } ; ! Any client request which contains the abovementioned metachars is discarded. USER/GROUP RESTRICTIONS ----------------------- The NRPE daemon cannot be run with (effective) root user/group privileges. You must run the daemon with an account that does not have superuser rights. Use the nrpe_user and nrpe_group directives in the config file to specify which user/group the daemon should run as. ENCRYPTION ---------- If you do enable support for command arguments in the NRPE daemon, make sure that you encrypt communications either by using: 1. Stunnel (see http://www.stunnel.org for more info) 2. Native SSL support Do NOT assume that just because the daemon is behind a firewall that you are safe! Always encrypt NRPE traffic! USING ARGUMENTS --------------- How do you use command arguments? Well, lets say you define a command in the NRPE config file that looks like this: command[check_users]=/usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_users -w $ARG1$ -c $ARG2$ You could then call the check_nrpe plugin like this: ./check_nrpe -H <host> -c check_users -a 5 10 The arguments '5' and '10' get substituted into the appropriate $ARGx$ macros in the command ($ARG1$ and $ARG2$, respectively). The command that would be executed by the NRPE daemon would look like this: /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_users -w 5 -c 10 You can supply up to 16 arguments to be passed to the command for substitution in $ARG$ macros ($ARG1$ - $ARG16$). -- Ethan Galstad (nagios@nagios.org)