Take the 2-minute tour ×  I'm using ssmtp, and I would like to
not make my /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf world-readable, because it has
my gateway password in cleartext. But if it is mode 600, then
ssmtp run as an unprivileged user errors out with "ssmtp: Cannot
open mailhub:25", because it cannot read the config file.  This
article recommend creating a special ssmtp user and making it
SUID, but before I add that kind of complexity to my deployment
script, I want to ask:  Is it safe (barring security holes in
ssmtp) to just make the ssmtp binary SUID root, so it can read
the config file?  (I'm aware of the dangers of SUID in general
-- no general answers please! My question is about ssmtp in
particular, because I'm wondering if it has been written with
being safe for SUID-root in mind.)  share|improve this question
1 Answer 1  up vote 2 down vote accepted  Read the article
again. It does not recommend running ssmtp as root. It says to
chown the file to a special ssmtp user and use SUID to run the
program as that use