security of Interactive powerdown login

Conor P. Cahill cpcahil at virtech.uucp
Sun Nov 11 00:24:59 AEST 1990


In article <1990Nov9.212510.9086 at mks.com> eric at mks.com (Eric Gisin) writes:
>If you want a more secure password-less powerdown userid
>and you have Interactive 2.2, you can change the shell for powerdown
>to /usr/admin/powerdown and add the following lines to the top of
>the /usr/admin/powerdown shell script:

NEVER NEVER NEVER have a root account without a password.  There are too 
many chances for it to be exploited.

Look at what could happen:

	cpcahil(virtech,61): id
	uid=100(cpcahil) gid=7(opadmin)
	cpcahil(virtech,63): su powerdown
	# id
	uid=0(root) gid=0(root)

-- 
Conor P. Cahill            (703)430-9247        Virtual Technologies, Inc.,
uunet!virtech!cpcahil                           46030 Manekin Plaza, Suite 160
                                                Sterling, VA 22170 



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