From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jun 21 12:19:39 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id MAA12003 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 21 Jun 1995 12:19:39 -0700 Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id MAA11983 for ; Wed, 21 Jun 1995 12:19:30 -0700 Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de with SMTP (5.67b+/DEC-Ultrix/4.3) id AA03594; Wed, 21 Jun 1995 21:18:14 +0200 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id VAA21914; Wed, 21 Jun 1995 21:18:09 +0200 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.6.11/8.6.9) id TAA20917; Wed, 21 Jun 1995 19:15:39 +0200 From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199506211715.TAA20917@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: PPP password security To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 1995 19:15:38 +0200 (MET DST) Cc: brian@beru.wustl.edu (Brian L Gottlieb) Reply-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) In-Reply-To: <199506211349.OAA19860@whisker.internet-eireann.ie> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jun 21, 95 02:49:03 pm Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Length: 1058 Sender: hackers-owner@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk As Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > From: brian@beru.wustl.edu (Brian L Gottlieb) > Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc > Subject: PPP login script security > Date: 20 Jun 1995 17:40:02 GMT > > Has anyone been doing any work towards this? One idea I had was to > have the password in /etc/ppp.secret be encrypted. See my Usenet reply to Brian. His proposal would only move the vulnerability to the security of the encryption key instead of the plaintext file (since the daemon needs to know the encryption key). It's a long-standing tradition to store remote passwords in plaintext (/etc/uucp/systems etc.), and i don't see a problem as long as the files are mode 0600 and owned by a `trusted' user. If you cannot trust root, forget about Unix security. Perhaps all those programs should refuse to work if they detect insecure files containing the password (like the .rhosts and .netrc permission checks). -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)