Re: Stanford break in

["R. DuFresne" <dufresne () sysinfo com>]

> Network synced passwords are the only way to manage a large number of 
> users. If you have 10 workstations and 1 server, it might be fine to have 
> no network directory, but with 300,000 users, I would say it's impossible. 
> I would consider: LDAP, NDS, AD, SecureID, RADIUS, TACACS. (notice the 
> conspicuous absence of NIS, and I wanted to leave out AD, but it seems to 
> be unavoidable these days.


HP made this usless, unless they have finally enabled a shadow setup in
new versions of the OS.  We played the single sing-on game at nortel, and
played with password cracking and all that, but, since 80% of the servers
were hp's and they lacked any seperation of passwords from the required
/etc/passwd file, users wanting to up their privs on a system just took
copies of the /etc/passwd file home and cracked to the point they felt
they needed.  And our CISSP's spent alot of time putting together all
these metrics on strong passwords and how effective they were making
security of the network, without facing the reality of the 80% exposure
faced.  HP folks a few years ago hinted that HP was going to change theit
OS to include shadow password implimentations, but, I've long since moved
on and these days don;t have to play on much but SUN's and AIX systems, so
I do not know if they have something beside the horrid TCB that would
break most interal apps for companies and require alot of retrofitting.

Thanks,

Ron DuFresne
-- 
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