[2590] in Kerberos
Kerberos 5 & login
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Ramus)
Wed Feb 24 21:00:06 1993
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 93 17:39:16 PST
From: ramus@nersc.gov (Joe Ramus)
To: kerberos@Athena.MIT.EDU
In the Sandia version of Kerberos 5, they decided that they did not
want to provide a "login" program for each platform. They would
just use the vendor provided login.
On some platforms, there is a "-f" option on login which can be used
to force a login without a password. This is used by rlogind or telnetd
to perform the login after a user is successfully authenticated. There
may also be a file .k5login in the home directory which identifies
the principals authorized to use this account.
But on other platforms (such as SunOS), there is no "-f" option on
the vendor supplied login. In this case, Sandia chose to use
"login -r" after authentication is completed. This method requires a
user to have a .rhosts file in the home directory and this opens up
some new security risks. There are some ways to disable the normal
BSD rlogin mechanism which uses the .rhosts file.
My question:
Do you think it is risky to use the .rhosts file after
authentication is completed? Is the mere existence of the .rhosts
file a risk?
For some platforms, I think MIT has a replacement for the vendor login
that implements the -f option. If so, what platforms does it run on?
Are there any undesirable "side-effects" when using the non-vendor
login?
Joe Ramus NERSC Livermore (510) 423-8917 ramus@nersc.gov
