NFSv4 and NFS Security
Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu
If you use NFS (Network File System) to share file systems between multiple computers,
you are probably using NFS Version 2 or 3. However, you should know that NFSv4
is under active development and is available for trial use under a variety of
operating systems.
NFSv4 offers numerous advantages over NFSv2 and NFSv3, including dealing with
a variety of security issues mentioned in RFC2623 ("NFS Version 2 and
Version 3 Security Issues and the NFS Protocol's Use of RPCSEC_GSS and
Kerberos V5," http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2623.txt ).
Those of you currently running NFS v2 or NFS v3 may also be interested in
the other NFS security references mentioned below.
References
- NFS Version 4: http://nfsv4.org/
- Network Appliance—The NFS Version 4 Protocol
(nice introduction): http://www.netapp.com/tech_library/3085.html
-
CITI Projects: NFS Version 4 Open Source Reference Implementation: http://www.citi.umich.edu/projects/nfsv4/
- Learning NFSv4 With Fedora Core 2: http://www.vanemery.com/Linux/NFSv4/NFSv4-no-rpcsec.html
- CERT Advisory CA-1994-15 NFS Vulnerabilities: http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1994-15.html
- NFS Security: http://www.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/feature_story-118.html
- Security and NFS: http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/security.html
- Secure NFS and NIS via SSH Tunnel: http://www.math.ualberta.ca/imaging/snfs/
Summer
2004 Computing News | Computing
Center Home Page
