OSEC

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From: Steven M. Bellovin (smbresearch.att.com)
Date: Thu Jan 25 2001 - 09:30:11 CST

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    In message <87elxr8yth.fsfsnark.piermont.com>, "Perry E. Metzger" writes:
    >
    >Every day I get reports telling me crud like:
    >
    > Login toor is off but still has a valid shell (/bin/sh)
    > Login backup is off but still has a valid shell (/bin/sh)
    >
    >etc.
    >
    >I want these accounts around -- I just want the password based login
    >capability disabled.
    >
    >Right now, as it stands, /etc/security prints that message out no
    >matter what if field two of the password file is not thirteen or
    >twenty characters long. (What is twenty characters for?)
    >
    >I propose that we distinguish between accounts that are not password
    >loginable and accounts that are off by using different characters for
    >the second field -- something other than * -- and that I then hack the
    >/etc/security script to properly note this distinction and ignore the
    >accounts that are intentionally on but password disabled.
    >
    >Comments?

    I have similar complaints. How about "nopw" being the magic string
    you're looking for? Better yet, "*nopw", with "*" meaning "/etc/security
    should ignore this; the remaining characters may be significant to
    something else". That way, we can "*files-only" for an ownership id,
    "*ssh-only", "*anon-ftp", etc.

                    --Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb