Hello, Eric!
On Fri, 31 Jul 1998, Eric Diwouta-Loth wrote:
>I've heard many and many times talkin about shadow passwords.
>I will like to know what is its meaning and its utilisayion
The great security problem in UNIX, is that passwords are world-readable.
Even, if they are crypted, they often based on dictionary words.
This allows hackers to decrypt some passwords having dictionary and
special program. There are programs, that able to crack crypted password anyway,
without a dictionary, but they take more time to work. So, it is really
unsafe to store passwords in world-readable file. /etc/passwd should be readable
since numerious programs use information, stored in it ( other than password ).
Shadowing is the technology, when you store passwords separately from other
user information in a special file ( formerly /etc/shadow ), that has only
root permissions ( formerly -r-------- or 0400 ). This allows to protect
passwords from stealing. Also, there is no need to rewrite programs to adapt
them to different /etc/passwd structure. Only programs, that require
authentication.
Bye.
--
Not all who own a harp are harpers.
-- Marcus Terentius Varro
--
With best of best regards, Pawel S. Veselov (aka Black Angel)
Web page : http://i.am/BlackAngel | ICQ UIN : 5252265
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