Re: nidump on OS X

[Bryan Blackburn <blb () pobox com>]

Disabling nidump wouldn't help, as this is NetInfo being a little too
generous.  You can also use, for example, niutil:

niutil -read . /users/root

You'll note nidump isn't setid-anything, so someone can simply copy it
from another machine.

Bryan


On Sep 15, 2002 14:28, Dale Harris stated:
> Basically any normal user can get a dump of the passwd file and attempt 
> brute force attacks on the encrypted passwds, it includes the root passwd.
>
> This problem has been around for well over a year, but Apple ignores it:
>
> http://www.securitytracker.com/alerts/2001/Jul/1001946.html
> http://online.securityfocus.com/archive/1/211718
>
> However Apple hasn't seemed to bother addressing it yet since it still persists
> in OS X.2 (Jaguar).  You'd think they might have taken the opportunity to fix
> this problem with a new major release.
>
> This obviously isn't such a big problem when you are dealing with only
> limited access desktop systems, but Xserve exists now, and I would think
> it'd be a bigger concern.  Course you could always chmod 700 nidump.
>
> -- 
> Dale Harris   
> rodmur () maybe org
> /.-)