From: navarra@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (John Navarra)
Subject: Re: Password admin question
Organization: Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
Distribution: comp.unix.admin
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 22:32:34 GMT

In article <tr.702840229@samadams> tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold) writes:
>wallis@psychosis.ssc.gov (Dave Wallis) writes:
>
>$ So here's the question: is there a program out there somewhere that
>$ will automatcially generate reasonable passwords (ie, pronounce-able
>$ (and remberable), but not easily guessable? I shudder at the thought
>$ of having to come up with 10 new passwords every month! (guess I could
>$ delegate, huh?)

	We have a program called 'passgen' on our machine. I am not sure
if that is local to Sun or publically available. It is in /usr/local/bin.
Not all of them are pronouncable and I believe they all include some
special character. There are ways to set up password aging. As superuser,
the passwd -a option will tell you that info. See passwd.1 for further
info on this.

>
>$ Also, if anyone else has found a similar situation, how have you
>$ handled a relatively large number of root passwords without having to
>$ resort to writing them down?

	well, here the sysadmins use su2. But I don't think that is a 
good idea - see below.

>
>Each person remembers his own superuser password.  He never gives it
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>out to anyone.  If this policy is adhered to, you don't have to worry
  ^^^^^^^^^^
>about "the" password being propogated.  If someone temporarily needs
>superuser privileges, create a temporary superuser login for him.
>Since no one gives passwords away, you don't have to change passwords
>every month.

	This is basically what su2 does. Every person listed in
/etc/super-users (or /usr/local/lib/super-users)  can su2 to root. 
This has the advantage that not everyone needs to know the root password
because he/she uses his own password to su2 to root. 
	However, I see this as a *large* security problem because basically
multiple copies of the root password is floating around. Granted, you
have to have that person's id and know his password but this is still
a huge gamble. How hard is it to write a Trojan Horse to fake a login
screen and get someone's password -- not very, I've done it many times
with a great deal of success. Thus, all you need to do is fake this 
person into giving you his password and you now have root access.
	If there is only one root password you still have to have
someone else's id who is allowed to su to root (on SunOS anyway) 
AND know the root password. Setting up a fake su is harder to do than 
faking a login screen to be sure. Esp if the root users are smart and
type /bin/su or use other means to insure the su they are using is the
real one.

	What I recommend is to limit the number of users who need 
root passwords. If at all possible, set up groups to do certain tasks.
For example, some of the staff here need to take backups at night. They
don't have root privs but since they are part of a certain group, they
can execute programs to do that task. Try to cut down on root access
this way. Secure (chuckle) terminals are also a means to cut down
on tampering.

-tms
-- 
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