Date: Thu, 07 Apr 2005 09:48:30 -0400 From: Eric McCoy <emccoy@haystacks.org> To: Ean Kingston <ean@hedron.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: suspending login Message-ID: <42553A2E.4070005@haystacks.org> In-Reply-To: <1318.216.220.59.169.1112812328.squirrel@216.220.59.169> References: <42531440.30103@adelphia.net> <200504051850.33281.ean@hedron.org> <1112789082.28348.5.camel@mis3c.rtl.lan> <1318.216.220.59.169.1112812328.squirrel@216.220.59.169>
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Ean Kingston wrote: > If you change the password entry then, when you want > to enable the user again, the user has to enter a new password. This way, > the user keeps his/her old password. Note, the question asked for suspend, > not remove. I read suspend as implying that the account may be used again. No, you don't replace the password, you just insert an invalid character - one which can never be the result of crypt(). That invalid character is typically an asterisk. To unlock the account, you remove the asterisk. It's how pw usermod -L and -U work. For the OP, it's important to use all three approaches if your victim is untrustworthy. If you change the password but nothing else he can still get in via SSH; if you change the shell but nothing else he can still get in via FTP (possibly); if you change the home directory but nothing else he can still get in via SSH (and mess with /tmp or /var/tmp). So if you are locking out the user to preserve evidence of some misdeed, be sure to do all three. If this is just a real-life buddy who's welching on some money he owes you, though, doing only one will probably be sufficient. (Well, doing one and saying things to him like "I bought a .45 last week" and "It turns out that if you do enough cocaine most juries won't convict you of murder.")
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