Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 10:29:02 -0800 (PST) From: Tom <tom@sdf.com> To: Eivind Eklund <eivind@bitbox.follo.net> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Password verification (Was: cvs commit: ports/x11/kdebase - Imported sources) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.971103102358.20666B-100000@misery.sdf.com> In-Reply-To: <19971103191349.30502@bitbox.follo.net>
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On Mon, 3 Nov 1997, Eivind Eklund wrote: > > > Is it restricted to only let a user check his own password? Or could > > > we make it only check a users own password fairly easily? > > > > How would that be useful? > > Security. If a user can check other people's passwords, he can > brute-force passwords. If he can't, he can't. :-) Who said that they could? The pwcheck daemon only allows specific users to check passwords. This is much better. In your scheme, only a process running as user xyz can check the password for xyz. However, how did the process get to run as xyz? Probably a root process doing a setuid(). The pwcheck scheme does not require _anything_ to run as root. See my web server example. Web servers typically run as a "www" user. Using pwcheck, I can allow the "www" to verify password. In your scheme, I would have to let the web server run as root, in order to setuid() to a user, and then check the password. > Eivind. Tom
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