diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml index c869153b74..5470e30ffa 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml @@ -368,24 +368,19 @@ the wheel mechanism is better than having nothing at all, it is not necessarily the safest option. - + To lock an account completely, the &man.pw.8; command should + be used: - An indirect way to secure staff accounts, and ultimately - root access is to use an alternative - login access method and - do what is known as starring out the encrypted - password for the staff accounts. Using the &man.vipw.8; - command, one can replace each instance of an encrypted password - with a single * character. - This command will update the /etc/master.passwd - file and user/password database to disable password-authenticated - logins. + &prompt.root;pw lock staff - A staff account entry such as: + This will prevent the user from logging in using any + mechanism, including &man.ssh.1;. + + Another method of blocking access to accounts would be to + replace the encrypted password with a single + * character. This character + would never match the encrypted password and thus block user + access. For example, the following staff account: foobar:R9DT/Fa1/LV9U:1000:1000::0:0:Foo Bar:/home/foobar:/usr/local/bin/tcsh @@ -393,29 +388,13 @@ foobar:*:1000:1000::0:0:Foo Bar:/home/foobar:/usr/local/bin/tcsh - This change will prevent normal logins from occurring, - since the encrypted password will never match - *. With this done, - staff members must use - another mechanism to authenticate themselves such as - &man.kerberos.1; or &man.ssh.1; using a public/private key - pair. When using something like Kerberos, one generally must - secure the machines which run the Kerberos servers and your - desktop workstation. When using a public/private key pair - with ssh, one must generally secure - the machine used to login from (typically - one's workstation). An additional layer of protection can be - added to the key pair by password protecting the key pair when - creating it with &man.ssh-keygen.1;. Being able to - star out the passwords for staff accounts also - guarantees that staff members can only login through secure - access methods that you have set up. This forces all staff - members to use secure, encrypted connections for all of their - sessions, which closes an important hole used by many - intruders: sniffing the network from an unrelated, - less secure machine. + This will prevent the foobar user + from logging in using conventional methods. This method for + access restriction is flawed on sites using + Kerberos or in situations where the + user has set up keys with &man.ssh.1;. - The more indirect security mechanisms also assume that you are + These security mechanisms also assume that you are logging in from a more restrictive server to a less restrictive server. For example, if your main box is running all sorts of servers, your workstation should not be running any. In order for