Mats Erik Andersson <g...@gisladisker.se> writes: > Dear all, > > I am somewhat disturbed by that fact that the superuser > is able to execute > > # shisa -d --keys > > thereby gaining access to all passwords for all principals > of the running KDC. > > Contrast this to the situation with MIT Kerberos or Heimdal, > where a selected administrator is entrusted with the power to > inspect such secrecies, which the superuser is unable to access, > unless he was able to snoop the administrator's password. > > Am I lacking some insight, or is there a security issue here?
This was a design choice. It may not have been the best one. Storing the password allows some flexibility if crypto parameters needs to be changed later on. The KDC can then recompute the hashed keys. It also allows the same password database to be used by other protocols in the future, that may need access to the raw password. Remember, it should be _possible_ to use the Shishi KDC without storing the password: just convert a password to a key and then store that in the database. So someone genuinely concerned about this should be able to work around it. There ought to be a parameter to shisa, possibly even enabled by default, that forgets the password after generating a key that is stored on disk. This would make it easier to setup a KDC without storing plaintext passwords. Still, I believe it should be possible to use the current approach too: some may want the flexibility gained by storing the plaintext passwords. /Simon _______________________________________________ Help-shishi mailing list Help-shishi@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-shishi