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Date:      Tue, 14 Jul 1998 23:55:08 +0200
From:      Rasmus Kaj <kaj@interbizz.se>
To:        tom@uniserve.com
Cc:        kaj@interbizz.se
Subject:   Re: Finger and getpwent
Message-ID:  <19980714235508I.kaj@interbizz.se>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 Jul 1998 12:52:27 -0700 (PDT)" <Pine.BSF.3.96.980714125053.9463D-100000@shell.uniserve.ca>
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980714125053.9463D-100000@shell.uniserve.ca>

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>>>>> "T" == Tom  <tom@uniserve.com> writes:

 T> On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Paulo Fragoso wrote:

 >> I would like in future to use "#" in the beginning of the
 >> line. Because it's more visualy :-)

 T>   It also has a very different effect.  Munging the password field
 T> by adding a "*" simply disables all authentiction, but the user
 T> still exists.  This means that mail is still received.  If the
 T> user is commented out, the user ceases to exist, and mail bounces.

... But it would be nice to still se the user-name (rather than the
number) in `ls -l` ... This is probably minor, though. But anyway
... Having lookups fail and reverse lookups success would do it ...

Is this a security hole?  A user who cant find 'sam' would be able to
check all id's (0, 1, 2 ... 65535) and see if one returns 'sam'
... Does this matter? Is it a security flaw?  Few network services
(some file systems, no more afaik) go by the numeric user Id -- and
those don't care at all for the name. What happens if user #4711 on a
remote system makes a file on my NFS server, which has him commented
out? The file will be, if he can find a directory he (his group or
all) can write to. On the other hand, that is true if that user is
entirely removed from my /etc/password entirely as well, and certainly
if he's 'disabled by password' ...

// Rasmus

-- 
kaj@cityonline.se --------------- Rasmus Kaj - http://www.e.kth.se/~kaj/
 \               CityOnLine IB Production AB - http://www.CityOnLine.se/
  \---------------------- Never try to outstubborn a cat -- Lazarus Long

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