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Re: Root login



Vincent Deffontaines <vincent@gryzor.com>:
>  Marek Kubica a écrit :
> > On Thu, 4 Sep 2008 13:25:13 +0100
> > Pawe? Krzywicki <krzywicki.pawel@googlemail.com> wrote:
> > 
> >>> the solution was as Cerbelle said. Login as a normal user and do
> >>> sudo ( or you can activate root login from the login menu; but i
> >>> personally consider it really dangerous!)
> >> I am wondering why this is dangerous? 
> >> If your password is seen as "strong" "FaG34#fCFD12drtfdg" something
> >> like this for example why this is dangerous?
> > 
> > The point is, that 1) not too many people use strong passwords 2)
> > having root access allowed makes it [easier] to break in, since the
> > username is known as it is always "root". User-accounts might be named
> > pawel, pawelk, krzywicki or be completely unknown for the attacker.
> 
>  Even though this principle is true, it seems to me it is not in 
>  application on every system.
> 
>  Try to login on any Lenny box console with an invalid account.
>  You will get "Incorrect login" without being prompted for a
>  password at all.

What?  And you get a shell prompt?!?

>  I tend to consider this as a quite bad bug, but it seems it has
>  been so for a while in Lenny, and even in upstream PAM.

reportbug, search bugs.debian.org, ask in debian-mentors@lists.debian.org, ...

The "What?!?" was meant seriously.  The closest I've come to running
Testing is Sidux which is Sid based, so I can't easily verify this.  I
find it's difficult to believe that Lenny really does this, but what
do I know?  Can anyone confirm?


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