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Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 11:05:19 +0100 (MET)
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From: Eivind Eklund <perhaps@yes.no>
To: Tom <tom@sdf.com>
CC: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, perhaps@yes.no
In-reply-to: Tom's message of Sun, 2 Nov 1997 16:17:11 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: Password verification (Was: cvs commit: ports/x11/kdebase - Imported sources)
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> 
> 
> On Sun, 2 Nov 1997, Joao Carlos Mendes Luis wrote: 
> 
> ...
> > But, how to allow users check only their own password, and still
> > have the added security of shadow passwords ?  I can only think
> > in a kind of password checking daemon that would accept commands
> > on a AF_UNIX socket and some patches to libc pw commands.
> 
>   You can always use the pwcheck daemon from the Cyrus module (see ports).
> It opens a unix socket at /var/pwcheck/pwcheck.  Permissions on the
> /var/pwcheck directory can be used to determine who can check passwords.

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?

The simplest solution I can see is to create a /usr/bin/checkpw which
takes in a username/password on stdin, and checks that the username
has the same ID as the users real ID, and exits with OK/failure.  (And
I don't care about the expense of exec'ing a program to check a password
- checking passwords are supposed to be expensive.)

How is the feeling about this kind of program - too much bloat?
Security problem?  Personally, I want it - less security problem than
making other programs setuid.

Eivind.