Subject: Concerned about Debug Files

From: "Robert A. Hayden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 14:02:14 -0500 (CDT)

I do not want to sound accusatory or anything . . . . .

But I've installed pine in my account and found out the sysadmin checked
it out.

Now, I've just gotten a little reamed out because the .pine-debug# files
(I forgot to turn off debugging) has the password field in it.  He came
this close to accusing me of trying to crask account or something equally
evil and I was able to calm him by saying that I would look into it.

Well, I'm looking into it.  Why is the password field included in the
debug files? (Note, I'm not fully C-literate).  

Sorry for the tone of this, I don't mean to sound nasty.

[> Robert Hayden                   ____   <]  Black Holes result from God 
[>                                 \  /__ <]  dividing the universe by zero. 
[> [email-masked]  \/  / <]  
[> [email-masked]            \/  <]  # include std_disclaimer.h

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 12:44:41 -0700 (PDT)

The only ``password field'' that appears in the .pine-debug# files is your own
password, in encrypted form.  Presumably, you already know what your own
password is.

Pine uses this to support the terminal locking functionality; there is a
command to lock your terminal that will not unlock it until you type your
password.  Pine does not (can not) know what your password is, but it can
compare the encrypted form of what you enter with the encrypted form of your
password, and assume that if they match that you gave the correct password.

Pine would not be able to access your encrypted password if it was not in the
/etc/passwd file for the world to see.

I believe that your system administrator is over-reacting.

But, this isn't the first time something like this has come up.  I suggest
that it should be removed from the debugging telemetry in the name of not
triggering any more unpleasant experiences.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 17:55:07 -0400 (EDT)

Mark Crispin writes:
> Pine does not (can not) know what your password is, but it can
> compare the encrypted form of what you enter with the encrypted form
> of your password

	Unless I'm missing something; this doesn't seem to be too
useful, as the number of sites that actually store encrypted passwords
in /etc/passwd is getting smaller and smaller.  What if a shadow
passwd file is being used?  Or MIT/AFS Kerberos?  Can pine handle
this?

	Besides, is it really pine's business to be worrying about
locking the screen?  There are other program to do this (xlock, etc.)

	Regards,

James

-- 
James Ralston Crawford \ Assistant Supervisor \ Advanced Technology Lab
[email-masked] \ [email-masked] \ [email-masked]
"Computer, you and I need to have a little talk."  - O'Brien, ST:DS9

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From: "Robert A. Hayden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 17:47:55 -0500 (CDT)

> locking the screen?  There are other program to do this (xlock, etc.)

I apologize for bringing up a touchy subject.

In any case, what if instead of using the login password, it instead, when
you invoke the lock, asks for a password, varifies, and then locks, using
that entered password to get back in, completely ignoring /etc/passwd.

It achieves the same purpose, but, if anything, makes people feel "safer".

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From: "David L. Miller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 08:58:43 -0700 (PDT)

> locking the screen?  There are other program to do this (xlock, etc.)
As I understand it, the original design of pine was geared toward the
environment at UW, where they still have alot of dumb terminals.  Although
terminal locking might not be so important for the rest of us, it makes
sense at UW.

I do agree that there are some things like the passwd entry that should be
boosted to a higher debug level.  It may still be valuable for problem
tracking, so I would not eliminate it entirely...

*****************************************************************************
David L. Miller                       Internet: [email-masked]
Systems Programmer/Network Analyst      BITNET: MILLERD@WSUVM1
Washington State University Tri-Cities    UUCP: ...!yoda!dmiller
100 Sprout Road                          
Richland, WA 99352                       Phone: (509)375-9245
*****************************************************************************

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From: Laurence Lundblade <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 21:54:10 -0400 (EDT)

The reason Pine has the lock command, the change password command, and a
few others is so that naive users don't have to learn UNIX to do these
things. 

This was all fine and dandy when there were no shadow password files.
The current code works.

For sites with protected password files there are two choices. You can
either prompt for a lock password which the user has to repeat to unlock
the screen, or make Pine run in priviledged mode so it has access to the
real password file (A shadow password file doesn't add much unless it
requires privilege to get to the real password file). That is Pine would
have to run setuid root.

Last I knew the planned solution was the first one mentioned. Until that
gets implemented lock is broken on machines with shadow password files.

This would be a really easy thing to implement if someone was up for a
little hacking....

LL