NIS and shadow all over the place

[Carel Fellinger <cfelling@iae.nl>]

Hai,

in return of installing Debian GNU/Linux I got my father's old 486,
so now I've this problem connecting my machines:)

I've installed NIS, but I can't prevent the shadow file of being
public now:( Anybody on my machine can do "ypcat shadow.byname" and
start cracking those passwords. I thought the hole point of shadow
was to let nobody but root see it. It's not a problem yet, I trust
my wife and kids, but I would be happier if it were hidden.

Or maybe I should consider switching to something else like Kerberos
or PAM?

I'm still running mainly Ham (eagerly waiting for potato to become stable:)
but have upgraded things, e.g libc

-- 
groetjes, carel