Cronjob for root password change. Post: 302903556

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Cronjob for root password change. Post 302903556 by Perderabo on Wednesday 28th of May 2014 11:27:53 AM

05-28-2014

Administrator Emeritus

There are quite a few objections to this entire approach. It is possible the the ap team will need to install a job in root's crontab. This would guarantee that they see your code. It also it means your "crontab -r" could be dangerous. If you must go down this path you can partially address your own objection. Switch to "usermod -p" and hard code the encrypted password. This is still terrible for security but it does beat hard coding the plaintext password.

But here is another approach for your consideration. Define a group called, perhaps, "bigshots". Add a line to /etc/group putting the ap team in the bigshots group. Now add a line like this:

Code:

%bigshots ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

to /etc/sudoers. Show the ap team how to use sudo to gain root power. And finally write a script to remove the bigshots line from both /etc/sudoers and /etc/group. This should be easy because we are using a screwy word like "bigshots" which probably will not collide with any other line in either file.

And the final touch: use the "at" command rather than "cron" to schedule the script at the appropiate time.

Perderabo

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LEARN ABOUT XFREE86

vipw

vipw(1B)					     SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands						  vipw(1B)

NAME

       vipw - edit the password file

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/ucb/vipw

DESCRIPTION

       vipw edits the password file while setting the appropriate locks, and does any necessary processing after the password file is unlocked. If
       the password file is already being edited, then you will be told to try again later.  The vi(1) editor will be used unless the  environment
       variable VISUAL or EDITOR indicates an alternate editor.

       vipw performs a number of consistency checks on the password entry for root, and will not allow a password file with a "mangled" root entry
       to be installed.  It also checks the /etc/shells file to verify the login shell for root.

FILES

       /etc/ptmp

       /etc/shells

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWscpu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       passwd(1), vi(1), passwd(4), attributes(5)

SunOS 5.10							    14 Sep 1992 							  vipw(1B)