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Date:      Fri, 25 May 2001 14:42:40 +0200
From:      Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
To:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   PAM, S/Key and authentication schemes.
Message-ID:  <200105251240.f4PCeO612402@gratis.grondar.za>

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Hi

We currently have a slew of authentication schemes in FreeBSD. There
is the usual lot in getpwent(3) and friends, OPIE, S/Key and PAM, and
then a bunch of home-rolled ones such as the WHEELSU rules in su(1),
and the anonymous user rules in ftpd(8). There is also kerberos in
2 forms, SSH, and the r-utils .rhosts files.

I'd like to simplify this lot in a way that makes it easy for the
administrator to decide her own policy.

PAM is ideal for this.

I have already tested this on my home cluster with su(1) (I just
made su a PAM-only thing), and this makes the code a whole lot
simpler. Simpler code == safer code.

I'd like to properly PAM-ize the things that need it, and simplify
where possible and where appropriate. In most cases, this means
gutting out the convoluted logic if favour of pam _only_. (Obviously
SSH will need its own scheme as well).

This means that PAM modules like pam_rhosts, pam_anonymous, pam_shells
pam_tcpd and so on can be used to set custom policies on a per-site
basis (Yeah, yeah, these need to be written!).

S/Key is OBE in my opinion and needs to be entirely replaced by OPIE.
(And in the majority of cases pam_opie will do the job).

Comments?

M
-- 
Mark Murray
Warning: this .sig is umop ap!sdn

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