Xref: utzoo news.sysadmin:1342 comp.unix.wizards:12308 Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!killer!pollux!dalsqnt!rpp386!jfh From: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: How to stop future viruses. Message-ID: <8542@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> Date: 10 Nov 88 03:30:07 GMT References: <16722@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <2178@cuuxb.ATT.COM> Reply-To: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) Organization: River Parishes Programming, Dallas TX Lines: 40 In article <2178@cuuxb.ATT.COM> dlm@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh) writes: |In article <16722@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> greg@math.Berkeley.EDU (Greg) writes: | Now that we've killed all copies of the Internet virus and | fixed sendmail and fingerd, it's time to thinking about | stopping future viruses. | | Here is some of what needs to be done | |1. Protect the password file. | | On most Unix systems that I've seen, /etc/passwd is publicly | readable. There is no reason for this. It's amusing to | have encrypted passwords that anyone can look at, but it's | also a security hole. | |This problem was announced in 1976 and fixed in most secure |systems [I did it for NSA]. ATT has shadow (hidden) passwords |in System V Relase 3.2. Other vendors: go thou and do likewise. |The ONLY problem, applications programs can't use password |validation for authentication then. Of course a Yellow Pages RPC |call could be used: I began working on a login replacement Friday. It is virtually complete and only needs minor tweaking. It has most of the features of the better logins - subsystem logins, console-only root logins, environmental variables set from login: response, etc. I will be posting the code to alt.sources and pubnet.sources some time tonight to solicit comments and suggestions. Unfortunately, I also need a su(1) and passwd(1) replacement. I think I need some other stuff as well, but I don't remember ... The resulting code will be public domain and freely reproducible without any restrictions. -- John F. Haugh II +----Make believe quote of the week---- VoiceNet: (214) 250-3311 Data: -6272 | Nancy Reagan on Artifical Trish: InterNet: jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US | "Just say `No, Honey'" UucpNet : !killer!rpp386!jfh +--------------------------------------