Hello,

I am interested how secure is OpenWrt compared to classic Linux? I installed openwrt some months ago and it looks like it is not multiuser - am I wrong? Is it possible to run each daemon with different user with restricted privileges?

?

OpenWrt was not designed to be multiuser, but I believe that you can add new accounts to /etc/passwd and set up specific processes to use these.  It really depends on how you want to set up your router.  Ideally, you would only want your router to 'route', and have other systems perform the actual work.

Overall, OpenWrt is as secure as any other Linux, no matter what you are running, if you start poking holes in it, you need to understand exactly what you are doing, and why you are doing it.

I know that the kernel is identical to other Linux distributions but several extra daemons are developed by volunteers and probably some of them are not excellent from security viewpoint.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/obtain.firmware

The third and I think the second as well, should enable you to install with more users. Actually the only thing missing for mutli user, I think, is the program to add a new user ;-) You could "install" that with wget or scp.

Because yes, you most definitely should run daemons by user without much privileges ;-)

For security, logging is important, too:

http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/howto/log.overview

Do you want to contribute?

I installed adduser and created extra users for test. Unfortunately "w" command always displays blank list:

root@asus:~# w
09:37:46 up 31 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.01
USER     TTY        LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU WHAT

"who" displays nothing as well.

(Last edited by T1000 on 12 Feb 2011, 08:43)