Re: Fwd: Re: [qmailtoaster] centos 6

[Eric Broch]

Okay,

It seems odd, to me at least, that using the mysql/mariadb commands 
'mysqldump' to backup the vpopmail database and to restore it again with 
'mysql -u xxx -pyyy vpopmail < db' yields a corrupt database. How is 
this possible? Certainly a backup/restore doesn't rehash passwords using 
the clear text field. It should simply restore exactly what's backed up. 
Is this thinking erroneous???

Eric


On 10/2/2018 12:09 PM, Dan McAllister - QMT DNS wrote:
I hear ya Andrew! I have a very large QMT that hosts hundreds of domains. One 
of those tenants knows that this is a QMT install, and wanted to have access to 
the vqadmin program -- which WOULD have given them visibility to other domains' 
passwords -- but I deny access to that tool to anyone (I don't even use it)... 
they CAN use the admin role with the standard qmailadmin interface, because 
that is limited to one domain at a time.

I have a list of "superadmins" for that system that have access to the user passwords 
through the shell "vuserinfo" command -- and you have to be elevated (root) to run that, 
so anyone breaking in (hacking) the website (apache user), or qmail (qmail, qmaill, or qmailq 
users) or even vpopmail (vpopmail user) will NOT be able to run that command.

I also CHANGE the default passwords for the MySQL database... so if you CAN 
break in, you CANNOT just query the database (because the vpopmail password is 
well known).

So that's been my way to deal with it... your mileage may vary 😊

Dan


-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Swartz <awswa...@acsalaska.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 2, 2018 11:24 AM
To: qmailtoaster-list@qmailtoaster.com
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [qmailtoaster] centos 6

Dan,

Excellent explanation. Thank you.

It explains something which I did not report in my email:  I solved this
by trying only the first 16 characters of the long passwords, and sure
enough they validated.  I did not put enough thought into it to realize
that the hashes had been regenerated from the shortened passwords.

This explanation implies that the problem is that the restore script
generates new hashes from the [stored] cleartext passwords.  Seems like
an easy fix would be to just backup/restore the hashes instead of
generating new hashes.

QUESTIONS:
1. What is the format of the stored hash?  Looks like concatenation of
two [atypical] base64 fields.

2. How difficult would it be to remove the cleartext passwords from
vpopmail?  I see the logic of storing the "hint".  But it means that for
systems with multiple admins, all of the admins can view (and therefore
use) most users' passwords.  That is problematic even without
considering the foreign intruder risk.

My security concern for QMT has always been that I've never trusted the
qmail accessories as much as qmail itself.  I remain fairly confident
that an intruder will not enter via port 25 (i.e. through qmail).  But
running the web server (for webmail) markedly increases the risk.

QUESTION: could a webserver SQL-injection retrieve the cleartext passwords?

-Andy



On 10/2/2018 5:02 AM, Dan McAllister - QMT DNS wrote:
I know I'm "Johnny-come-lately" on this topic, but I can explain the results 
you're seeing and have seen the same myself:

The QMT vpopmail default setup saves the hashed password, as well as the first 
16-characters of the clear-text password, in the MySQL database. That has 
already been established. What you probably don't know (or didn't think of) is 
how those fields are used!

Consider the following:
  - First, the length of the hashing algorithm is a fixed length. Different 
hashes, different lengths (for example: MD5 hashes are always 32 characters, 
SHA1 hashes have 40 characters, sha512 hashes 128, and so on...)
  - Second, ONLY the hashed password is used for validation. There is no NEED for the 
cleartext password in the database, it's there simply because the MySQL database was 
considered somewhat secure, and the original developers of the QMT realized that about 
40% of user problems are caused by NOT KNOWING THEIR PASSWORDS, and being able to GIVE 
them their existing password was generally easier than resetting it (and hearing 
complaints that, although you "fixed" their desktop mail, now their phone's 
weren't getting email!)
  - Finally, the original designers of QMT assumed people would use long passwords -- it 
was suggested in the original documentation. Thus, saving only the first 16 characters of 
the password in cleartext meant you were only REALLY saving a "password hint" 
vs. the entire password.

So - when you enter a 75 character password (only slightly absurd these days), and if we assume a 
sha1 password hash, then the "set password" function hashes your 75 characters into a 
40-character SHA1 hash and saves it into the database field that stores up to (magically) 40 
characters. (FWIW: when you enter your 2-character password of "ok", the sha1 algorithm 
ALSO generates a 40 character output!). After is stores the hashed password, it ALSO stores the 
first 16 characters of the cleartext password -- because that's the length of the field in the 
database.

When you try to authenticate, the password you provided is re-hashed 
(regardless of its length -- although usually those fields have 64, 72, or 128 
character field limits - depending on the web-page designer/programmer), and 
those 40 characters (the output of the sha1 hash) are compared to your stored 
hash... there is no query of the cleartext password.

Unfortunately, when you attempt to restore your passwords using just the stored 
cleartext passwords, you will find (not surprisingly) that passwords that were 
longer than the 16 chars generate a totally different hash result! (Interesting 
side-note: you could have told your users that their passwords were unchanged, 
but that they had to stop after the 16th character -- and it would have worked!)

I hope this explains a few things!!

Dan


IT4SOHO, LLC
33 4th St N; STE 211
St. Petersburg, FL 33701
+1-877-IT4SOHO
+1-877-484-7646
For service requests, direct your email to serv...@it4soho.com



-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Broch <ebr...@whitehorsetc.com>
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2018 1:35 AM
To: qmailtoaster-list@qmailtoaster.com
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re: [qmailtoaster] centos 6

Thanks, Andy. Plain text password have been a part of qt for as long as I've 
been using it. I understand you're concern. I'm not sure about the password 
length issue, I don't remember ever changing (patching) vpopmail like that, but 
I'll look into it.


On 9/27/2018 11:28 PM, Andrew Swartz wrote:
I recently did the backup/restore and I have one hiccup to report.

A few of the account passwords did not work after backup from centos5
and restore to centos7.

Took some time to troubleshoot, but I poked around in the vpopmail
database and figured it out.  It was due to the vpopmail database
schema, which stores a 16 character password AND its hash.  It allowed
[and worked with] passwords longer than 16 characters (I'm unsure how).
But after the backup/restore, all passwords longer than 16 characters
failed.  Problem was fixed by resetting all of these passwords to new
ones with the proper length.  Luckily there were not many like this.
But for a large system, this could be a major pain.

This seems like a bug.  If the max password length is 16 characters,
then the set-password webpage should reject passwords that are too long.

Also, I'm not sure why it stores a plaintext password in addition to
its hash.  The modern standard is to store only the hash.  This is
potentially a major security problem.

-Andy


On 9/27/2018 8:57 PM, Tony White wrote:
Eric,
    I now have a working v6 COS qmt, thank you for you help an patience.
Now the backup and restore...

best wishes
    Tony White

On 28/09/18 14:43, Eric Broch wrote:

changed now


On 9/27/2018 10:41 PM, Tony White wrote:
Eric,
    Yes I did run that command.

    At stage 3 after manually starting qmail at the end of qt-install.

Stage 3

rpm -Uvh
ftp://ftp.qmailtoaster.com/pub/repo/qmt/CentOS/6/current/x86_64/qmt
-release-1-5.qt.el6.noarch.rpm
needs to be

rpm -Uvh
ftp://ftp.qmailtoaster.com/pub/repo/qmt/CentOS/6/current/x86_64/qmt
-release-1-6.qt.el6.noarch.rpm


best wishes
    Tony White

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On 28/09/18 14:14, Eric Broch wrote:
Excellent!!! Glad to hear it.


On 9/27/2018 10:03 PM, Tony White wrote:
Eric,
    Sorry I did not intend to email offlist.
I did a reply to sender not the list.
Apologies.

I have reset the VM to give me a blank minimal install again.
It has just finished qt-bootstrp-2 without error.
So far so good.

cheers.


On 28/09/18 13:53, Eric Broch wrote:
Tony, If you communicate off list you must whitelist my address


Tony,

I think (not sure why) you're still using the wrong bootstrap
scripts, my bootstrap's (below in red and green) do not use
'mirrors.qmailtoaster.com' but 'mirror2.qmailtoaster.com'

Irritatingly, this is because all the mirror maintainers dropped
the ball and didn't bother to let anyone know that they weren't
supporting QMT anymore. If this is a pre-existing machine
disable the qmailtoaster-current repo:

# yum install yum-utils && yum-config-manager --disable
qmailtoaster-current qmailtoaster-current-nodist

<qt-bootstrap-1>

#!/bin/bash

# Copyright (C) Eric Shubert <e...@datamatters.us> # # script to
do initial bootstrap processing (disable selinux, update
everything)
################################################################
######
# Change Log
# 12/26/13 written by Eric 'shubes' <e...@shubes.net>
################################################################
######

################################################################
######
# disable SELINUX
#
a2_disable_selinux(){

selinux_config=/etc/selinux/config

if [ ! -f "$selinux_config" ]; then
    echo "$me - $seclinux_config not found"
    exit 1
fi

echo "$me - disabling SELINUX ..."
sed -i$(date +%Y%m%d) -e "s|^SELINUX=.*$|SELINUX=disabled|"
$selinux_config
}

################################################################
######
# main routine begins here
#
me=${0##*/}
myver=v1.0
echo "$me - $myversion"

a2_disable_selinux

echo "$me - updating all packages (yum update) ..."
yum clean all
yum -y --nogpgcheck update

echo "$me - rebooting now..."
shutdown -r now

echo "$me - completed"
exit 0
</qt-bootstrap-1>


<qt-bootstrap-2>

#!/bin/bash
# Copyright (C) Eric Shubert <e...@datamatters.us> # # script to
do secondary bootstrap processing (install yum priorities, QMT
repo)
################################################################
######
# Change Log
# 12/26/13 written by Eric 'shubes' <e...@shubes.net>
################################################################
######

################################################################
######
# main routine begins here
#
me=${0##*/}
myver=v1.0
echo "$me - $myversion"

# install yum-priorities
echo "$me - installing yum-priorities (plugin) ..."
yum -y install yum-priorities

# install qmailtoaster-release
qmt_release_pkg=qmailtoaster-release-2.0-2.qt.nodist.noarch.rpm
echo "$me - installing $qmt_release_pkg (repo) ..."
rpm -ivh
http://mirror2.qmailtoaster.com/current/nodist/$qmt_release_pkg

# install qmailtoaster-util (scripts) echo "$me - installing
qmailtoaster-util (scripts) ..."
yum -y install --nogpgcheck qmailtoaster-util

echo "$me - completed"
exit 0

</qt-bootstrap-2>


On 9/27/2018 8:50 PM, Tony White wrote:
Eric,
    Step one failed on .org...

[root@cos6-10-base ~]# curl
https://www.qmailtoaster.org/qt-bootstrap-1 >qt-bootstrap-1 &&
curl https://www.qmailtoaster.org/qt-bootstrap-2
qt-bootstrap-2
    % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time
Time  Current
                                   Dload  Upload   Total   Spent
Left  Speed
105  1050  105  1050    0     0    931      0  0:00:01  0:00:01
--:--:--  4133
    % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time
Time  Current
                                   Dload  Upload   Total   Spent
Left  Speed
100  1004  100  1004    0     0    890      0  0:00:01  0:00:01
--:--:--  3968
[root@cos6-10-base ~]# chmod 755 qt-bootstrap-*
[root@cos6-10-base ~]# ./qt-bootstrap-1
qt-bootstrap-1 -
qt-bootstrap-1 - disabling SELINUX ...
qt-bootstrap-1 - updating all packages (yum update) ...
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, priorities Cleaning repos: base
extras qmailtoaster-current qmailtoaster-current-nodist updates
Cleaning up Everything Cleaning up list of fastest mirrors
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, priorities Setting up Update
Process Determining fastest mirrors Could not retrieve
mirrorlist
http://mirrors.qmailtoaster.com/current/CentOS/mirror.list
error was
14: PYCURL ERROR 51 - "SSL: certificate subject name
'whitehorsetc.com' does not match target host name
'mirrors.qmailtoaster.com'"
Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo:
qmailtoaster-current
qt-bootstrap-1 - rebooting now...
qt-bootstrap-1 - completed
[root@cos6-10-base ~]#
Broadcast message from root@cos6-10-base
      (/dev/pts/0) at 12:49 ...

The system is going down for reboot NOW!

best wishes
    Tony White

On 28/09/18 12:37, Eric Broch wrote:
Tony,

It is working, but...

I can tell by the download of
'qmailtoaster-release-2.0-1.qt.nodist.noarch.rpm' and the use
of 'mirrors.qmailtoaster.com' in the scripts that you're not
following the correct instructions.

I'm not sure whether the qmailtoaster.com website (mirrored)
has completely propagated or not.

Go to qmailtoaster.org and follow the instructions there.

Eric



On 9/27/2018 7:56 PM, Tony White wrote:
Hi Eric,
    Sadly it is still not working...
The download of the
http://mirrors.qmailtoaster.com/current/nodist/qmailtoaster-r
elease-2.0-1.qt.nodist.noarch.rpm file will always fail due
to it kicking the connection up to https and not leaving it
as http.

Screen Dump...
--------------------------

[root@cos6-10-base ~]# sh qt-bootstrap-2
qt-bootstrap-2 -
qt-bootstrap-2 - installing yum-priorities (plugin) ...
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Setting up Install Process
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
   * base: centos.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au
   * extras: centos.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au
   * updates: mirror.as24220.net Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package yum-plugin-priorities.noarch 0:1.1.30-42.el6_10
will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================
==================================================
   Package                           Arch Version
Repository           Size
=============================================================
==================================================
Installing:
   yum-plugin-priorities             noarch
1.1.30-42.el6_10               updates              28 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================
==================================================
Install       1 Package(s)

Total download size: 28 k
Installed size: 28 k
Downloading Packages:
yum-plugin-priorities-1.1.30-42.el6_10.noarch.rpm
|  28 kB     00:00
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
    Installing :
yum-plugin-priorities-1.1.30-42.el6_10.noarch
1/1
    Verifying  :
yum-plugin-priorities-1.1.30-42.el6_10.noarch
1/1

Installed:
    yum-plugin-priorities.noarch
0:1.1.30-42.el6_10


Complete!
qt-bootstrap-2 - installing
qmailtoaster-release-2.0-1.qt.nodist.noarch.rpm (repo) ...
Retrieving
http://mirrors.qmailtoaster.com/current/nodist/qmailtoaster-r
elease-2.0-1.qt.nodist.noarch.rpm
curl: (51) SSL: certificate subject name 'monk13.stakehouse.io'
does not match target host name 'mirrors.qmailtoaster.com'
error: skipping
http://mirrors.qmailtoaster.com/current/nodist/qmailtoaster-r
elease-2.0-1.qt.nodist.noarch.rpm
- transfer failed
qt-bootstrap-2 - installing qmailtoaster-util (scripts) ...
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, priorities Setting up Install
Process Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
   * base: centos.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au
   * extras: centos.mirror.digitalpacific.com.au
   * updates: mirror.as24220.net No package qmailtoaster-util
available.
Error: Nothing to do
qt-bootstrap-2 - completed


best wishes
    Tony White

On 27/09/18 10:24, Eric Broch wrote:
List,

There were problems with the installation of QMT on CentOS 6
as you'all well know since I tested last November (2017).
The problems existed primarily due to mirrors not being
maintained. I've fixed these problems...hopefully. If anyone
has issue please let me know so that they can be fixed.

--
Eric Broch
White Horse Technical Consulting (WHTC)
--
Eric Broch
White Horse Technical Consulting (WHTC)
--
Eric Broch
White Horse Technical Consulting (WHTC)
--
Eric Broch
White Horse Technical Consulting (WHTC)
--
Eric Broch
White Horse Technical Consulting (WHTC)


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