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