Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!uwvax!mcvoy
From: mcvoy@rsch.WISC.EDU (Lawrence W. McVoy)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: blank lines in /etc/passwd
Message-ID: <2845@rsch.WISC.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22-Oct-86 04:53:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: rsch.2845
Posted: Wed Oct 22 04:53:27 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 22:15:47 EDT
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 15
Keywords: Yeah, yeah, yeah

OK, I'm getting mail msgs and postings that you can never generate a
"*" by encrypting a string.  Fine.  Great.  If I had thought about it,
I would have realized that.  But I didn't because that's really not
what I had intended to gripe about.  My original point still stands:
it's stupid to put a dummy entry into the passwd file that has uid==0.
You could slip up and delete the star, maybe you start copying it
around and screw it up, whatever.  Why insist on living on the edge?
People who insist on doing stupid things like this are the same sort of
people that leave lots of users in roots .rhosts.  Sloppy attitudes
lead to sloppy security.
-- 
Larry McVoy 	        mcvoy@rsch.wisc.edu, 
      		        {seismo, topaz, harvard, ihnp4, etc}!uwvax!mcvoy

"They're coming soon!  Quad-stated guru-gates!"