The wheel Group

The wheel group is, perhaps, not widely used today, or is seen as “archaic” and irrelevant. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The wheel group is a group which limits the number of people who are able to su to root. This usually consists of a group named “wheel” and a set of users that are permitted to use the utility ‘su’ in order to change to root.

Many systems, especially either commercial systems or Linux systems, come without wheel groups configured and implemented. At least one Linux distribution, comes with wheel groups preconfigured but not active. However, all or nearly all BSD based systems will come with the wheel group installed and set up.

However, at its simplest, a wheel group implementation requires no special set up. The basic set up, as it was in the beginning, was to do the following:

  1. Create a “wheel” group in /etc/groups
  2. Change the permissions of the “su” command so that only those in the “wheel” group may run it.

That’s all there is to it. Many su implementations, however, added internal support for the wheel group, perhaps with logs kept and a more informative refusal message explaining why su would not run (for those not in the wheel group).

Perhaps one reason that the wheel group is not widely used may have something to do with the GNU project. The GNU implementation of su has this in its info page:

Why GNU `su' does not support the `wheel' group
===============================================

   (This section is by Richard Stallman.)

   Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the
rest.  For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to
seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and
keeping it secret from everyone else.  (I was able to thwart this coup
and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't
know how to do that in Unix.)

   However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone.  Under the usual
`su' mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes
with the ordinary users, he or she can tell the rest.  The "wheel
group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of
the rulers.

   I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers.  If you are
used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you
might find this idea strange at first.

Is it any wonder that GNU/Linux systems don’t enable the wheel group by default? FreeBSD, however, does use the wheel group by default – as does OpenBSD and NetBSD.

35 thoughts on “The wheel Group”

  1. I have noticed that the or a “wheel” group has been reading and writing data off my computer. I have also noticed that other things have gone on with my computer as well such as two proxies set up of which were not authorized. There has also been information from this computer used to write stories and music from information gathered. Which does not give me as the author free reign to write/ compose or sketch on my computer without someone else using the information. Now, I know this sounds impossible I have been told this is impossible but it isn’t. So much for the security programs offered for computers that people spend vast amts of money on.
    So, you SEE, this by now has probably already been read and written as I type this for all I know….perhaps I need to bring up the activity monitor and check that out.
    Have a lovely day.
    I

  2. As you noticed, it is not impossible for your computer to be compromised (as we call it). If someone is determined enough, any computer can be taken over by someone else.

    The best you can do is to keep your system updated and run checks for viruses, etc. on a regular basis. If you are an end user who wants a system that requires no updating or patching, you won’t find one.

    If you are a user that wants a system that is easy to manage, and that has a good record of updates and of security, I would recommend any one of the following: Red Hat Workstation, PC-BSD, OpenBSD, MacOS X… Most systems require additional configuration to be the most secure; OpenBSD does not – and perhaps, neither does MacOS X.

    That is why people spend money on computer security experts – and “tiger teams” to break in – and on Chief Security Officers of companies… instead of just on programs.

  3. Another one of his alarmingly failed “power to the people” lapses. I’ve grown accustomed to them.

    1. Yeah, this doesn’t take web infrastructure into account, where the ‘users’ are visitors to a site. Bad planning for the wrong reasons on the part of stallman.

  4. Fascinating historical note.

    The wheel group is just common sense. You don’t want non-privileged local users to be able to just start guessing at the root password. And, if all your network daemons are running as a non-root user (as they should be), then the wheel group makes another hurdle to block a hacker who may get local access through a flawed network server. … “wheel” is just one more important layer of the security onion. 🙂

  5. Sometimes, when we talk about Wheel group, we`re talking about the famous “circle of thrust”, that makes sense to me, it’s common sense that you at first sight will see, which users does/ or doesn’t have security capabilities.

  6. Pingback: Hummy: Wheel Group
  7. you need to uncomment the line

    # Allows people in group wheel to run all commands
    %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

    In order to allow the wheel users to execute the commands

    thanks:

    1. You should in most cases not do that at all. It would allow every member of the wheel group to execute commands as root without ever being asked for a password. Good you failed to mention where this line was supposed to go.

  8. Can Anybody help on this problem?
    Problem statement.
    In this part of the assignment, delegates will create a pseudo-device and write a device driver for it. The pseudo-device provides a “backdoor” for gaining root access for a particular user. Instead of compiling the device driver into the kernel, delegate will create a module. Modules are object binaries that can be dynamically loaded into the kernel. They are similar to a DLL in MS Windows. Below is the description of the device the delegates are creating and the functionality your device driver is required to implement.
    This pseudo-device gives root privileges to the task whose pid is written to the device. When the module is installed, the uid of the user who are allowed to use this device can be passed as module parameters. Any other user, including root, that tries to use this device will get an “access denied” error. When the correct user accesses the device for executing operations, the device driver finds the task associated with the pid and grants that task root privileges.
    Work expected:
    1. Identify proper device id, registration functions, and driver methods for the above given problem statement
    2. Design the proper data structures required and the identified functions/methods to be implemented. Note: Issues of race conditions and synchronization should be taken care if required.
    3. Develop the kernel module code for the designed functions with proper entry points to the driver
    4. Write Makefile for compilation of the developed kernel module. Construct your Makefile so that developed kernel module will compile with “make” command
    5. Accommodate the platform interface for the access to the developed module
    6. Add the compiled kernel module into the running kernel
    7. A program that uses the developed module to exec() a bash shell with root privileges. Modify the Makefile so that above program will compile when “make test” is run
    8. Test the developed module for its functionality and discuss the obtained results

    1. This is a homework assignment, and has nothing to do with the wheel group specifically. This comment is out of place here. You could ask your professor or teaching assistant if you need to.

  9. So while a “wheel” group is a start, it’s not best practice for system administration. Have a look at sudosh(1) for privilege escalation with proper logging. It’s far better than widespread unaccounted-for ‘su’ or ‘sudo’ usage.

    Happy Hacking!

  10. I find “Wheel” indispensible as a MacOS Admin, I Have to work with 2-Factor authentication and AD Login and aside from not having a PIV card reader built in (like the dells) they were nice to work with. I like having the hooks and scripts and the extra layer of abstraction that wheel gives me.

  11. So because stallman is a communist, many linux distros don’t have that extra layer on the security onion. Another reason why I find it extremly strange linux outgrew bsd in many areas.

    1. It really isn’t strange why Linux outpaced BSD: BSD (code and people) were tied up in court for many years, and Linux came along at the right time with no AT&T code. Linux also wound up bringing in a new crop of programmers who weren’t in the BSD environment.

      However, BSD also has outpaced Linux in other areas – support for ZFS, for one example – and dtrace, for another example. Documentation is also much more complete in all areas – especially in system man pages. There are no programs in FreeBSD that don’t have a man page (I checked programmatically). Linux can’t say this (I checked Red Hat).

  12. “At least one Linux distribution, comes with wheel groups preconfigured but not active.”

    btw it’s Arch Linux

  13. At least under Debian & friends, this kind of functionality can be enabled by uncommenting a line of /etc/pam.d/su:

    auth required pam_wheel.so

    The default “wheel” group under these distros is “root”. The line accepts configuration options like group=admin. For example, the “admin” is the default group having full sudo access under Ubuntu. Therefore, the functionality is implemented there, in PAM, but it isn’t enforced by default.

    1. The Ubuntu Server installations I’ve seen all support the root group. Being stubborn, I’ve been switching to the wheel group instead; it’s been good for 30 years, it’ll be good for another 30 🙂

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