Re: [9fans] plain passwords and keyfs

[Charles Forsyth <forsyth@terzarima.net>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 670 bytes --]

if you don't set a pop3 password in keyfs there won't be one in the clear (in `secret').
plan 9 itself doesn't need that password except to support pop3 clients
(and similar).  if you don't use pop3 you don't need it.
the administrator of the auth server can still shuffle the contents of the plan 9 `key'
files to masquerade for instance but cannot see the original plain text key.
thus your secret is safe unless it's in `secret',
because `key' doesn't contain the original key.

in any case, the casual snooping possible with Unix/Linux's `root' is a little
more tedious to do on Plan 9, and immutable logs in changeuser/keyfs
might discourage it further.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2899 bytes --]

From: Enrique Soriano <esoriano@lsub.org>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] plain passwords and keyfs
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 19:46:57 +0200
Message-ID: <4AC740C7-DCD0-11D8-89AF-0003931DE5D4@lsub.org>


El 23/07/2004, a las 18:10, Charles Forsyth escribió:

> the Plan 9 password is scrambled, into key not secret.
> secret is used for access to other systems.
> i don't think you must set it.

I used auth/changeuser to add the users (I didn't use directly the
keyfs filesystem).

> it is in plain text because it's hard to say which
> particular scrambling algorithm, if any,
> will be used to talk to those other systems.

Thanks.

Q.