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Why not use /bin/noshell? (was Re: Why do system users have valid shells)



On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 09:45:24AM +0200, Tobias Reckhard wrote:
> Hi
> 
> We recently noticed that a stock woody install produces an /etc/passwd 
> in which most, if not all, system users have a valid shell entry of 
> /bin/sh. They're all unable to login due to having no valid password, 
> but best UNIX security practice typically involves giving accounts that 
> don't need to be able to login a shell of /bin/false or /bin/true. Other 
> distros (at least some of them) appear to follow suit.

I have meant to ask this question for some time too. Specially since some 
distributions (such as RedHat) provide system users with a /bin/noshell 
shell. I'm not sure if this is the same shell as the one provided by Titan 
[1] but IMHO I believe it's a must to have a shell that logs the entry 
attempt to syslog (as opposed to what /bin/false or /bin/true do).

So, anybody knows any issues (Debian specific or not) related to using 
/bin/noshell instead?

Regards

Javi

PS: I guess, as for recommended practice, you mean CERT's guidelines:
http://www.cert.org/security-improvement/implementations/i049.02.html
which does suggest using Titan's noshell


[1] Titan's noshell can be found at:
http://www.fish.com/titan/src1/noshell.c

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