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Bug#5318: passwd <user> <pass> vulnerability



Package: passwd
Version: 1.0-5

When invoking passwd in the three argument style;  ie-- as root, passwd <user> <passwd>, any user can issue 'ps auxw | grep passwd' and see the password in cleartext.

The real bug is not so much that the above 'hole' exists-- even with munging of the ps information, there will [won't there?] always be a small window of time in which the clear-text passwd can be had from the ps table.

The real bug is that the man page mentions nothing of this vulnerability-- it does mention that the three argument form is really useful within superuser invoked shell scripts and the like, but doesn't mention that it should *never* be invoked on a machine that may have untrusted logins.

b.bum

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