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From: ron@topaz.rutgers.edu (Ron Natalie)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Passwords in /etc/group
Message-ID: <13453@topaz.rutgers.edu>
Date: Wed, 22-Jul-87 12:54:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.13453
Posted: Wed Jul 22 12:54:50 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 05:29:00 EDT
References: <5740010@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <207@macom1.UUCP> <3671@cisunx.UUCP> <2812@ncoast.UUCP> <462@unisoft.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 17

Actually, it copies the file first and after you are done editing it
makes sure that there is an account called root with a uid of zero and
the requisite number of colons on the line and has a home directory of
/.  It also performs the job of rebuilding the dbm database in 4.3 that
enables fast pwent lookups.

Another feature is that it does an explicit chmod to 644 so that people
with either extremely generous or paranoid umasks won't make the file
writable or unreadable to the public.

It would be nice if it checked the number of colons on all the lines,
verified that the numeric fields were numeric, and checked for silly
null entries that other programs make that end up being security bugs
(like ::0:0:::) on some systems.


-Ron