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Special Forums Cybersecurity Root login in Linux - does it make sense? Post 302731273 by bakunin on Wednesday 14th of November 2012 03:44:28 PM
Old 11-14-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
Not without my password-protected key, they can't. Even if they steal it, it won't work for them without the password. ssh-agent is how I use that to automate.
This was not what i meant: you have some user-account, which is allowed to log on AND it is allowed to "sudo su -". You protect this account with a password, a key and whatever else. This protection amounts to some level of security (whatever "some" is, this is not my point). If you would log in as root directly and have the same amount of security - the same key strength, the same password strength and whatever else you use to protect your user account. My point is that it follows, that these measures would amount to the same amount of security as with the user. It is equally hard to crack a key or a password, regardless of this key (password) protecting the root-account or any other user-account.

bakunin
 

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SHADOW(5)							File Formats Manual							 SHADOW(5)

NAME
shadow - encrypted password file DESCRIPTION
shadow contains the encrypted password information for user's accounts and optional the password aging information. Included is Login name Encrypted password Days since Jan 1, 1970 that password was last changed Days before password may be changed Days after which password must be changed Days before password is to expire that user is warned Days after password expires that account is disabled Days since Jan 1, 1970 that account is disabled A reserved field The password field must be filled. The encryped password consists of 13 to 24 characters from the 64 character alphabet a thru z, A thru Z, 0 thru 9, . and /. Refer to crypt(3) for details on how this string is interpreted. The date of the last password change is given as the number of days since Jan 1, 1970. The password may not be changed again until the proper number of days have passed, and must be changed after the maximum number of days. If the minimum number of days required is greater than the maximum number of day allowed, this password may not be changed by the user. An account is considered to be inactive and is disabled if the password is not changed within the specified number of days after the pass- word expires. An account will also be disabled on the specified day regardless of other password expiration information. This information supercedes any password or password age information present in /etc/passwd. This file must not be readable by regular users if password security is to be maintained. FILES
/etc/passwd - user account information /etc/shadow - encrypted user passwords SEE ALSO
chage(1), login(1), passwd(1), su(1), passwd(5), pwconv(8), pwunconv(8), sulogin(8) AUTHOR
Julianne Frances Haugh (jockgrrl@ix.netcom.com) SHADOW(5)
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