Ok, You have been harsh enough on the poor solution the user is going to choose.
Are you willing to give him some advise or directions where he should go to?

A textbook sentence I always learned was: You can burn a person with many 
words, it is better to help him with few in the right direction!

If he doesn't know what he is doing wrong, then how do you think he will learn 
to do it right the next time. He is clearly asking for advise.

Are there standard solutions for managing passwords which need to be used by 
many users and securing them without telling the real password to the user who 
needs one to impersonate as another user?

Kind regards,

Martijn


From: full-disclosure-boun...@lists.grok.org.uk 
[mailto:full-disclosure-boun...@lists.grok.org.uk] On Behalf Of Gage Bystrom
Sent: woensdag 7 december 2011 9:38
To: full-disclosure@lists.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] distributing passwords to users


O.o and you act like what he wants is a good thing? Getting /any/ service 
account with that file would be better than pillaging an entire server of ssh 
keys. With ssh keys you know you only got access to a few more servers on the 
network, maybe not even root or admin unless you got lucky and score the key 
used for root/admin for every single box. No, with that you score the entire 
clientele...

Not to mention what you described is not what he is asking. He wants to 
distribute the passwords to multiple users(idc if they are hashed, encrypted or 
not, just minor details at this point). What you described is a centralized 
database. There's only one copy of the file, only one server that holds the 
goods, the rest can have tidbits and if compromised can do minimum damage. 
Coupled with the right motivations and logging then attacking the support group 
on the internal network gives you almost nothing.

Conversely attacking a single user holding the password file for the OP is end 
game. You're simply not going to be able to secure multiple copies of the same 
file with different access controls(hey I used a textbook phrase :) ).

The only alternative is to have one access control, or all users have the same 
permission. However that is also absurd, you're only multiplying your attack 
service with each added user.

Maybe now ya see where I start wondering where the cognitive dissonance ought 
to be coming in for attempting what the OP is trying to do? I was wrong for 
assuming it should be obvious from the get go, but as you can see the ISP 
wasn't in the same boat he wants to board. They would be sitting in the crows 
nest wondering why the loonie on the deserted island was trying to paddle it 
home.

Alright, I think I've been harsh enough on the poor OP, but I hope he 
understands that this is a classic case of "You're doing it wrong". He knows 
what needs to be done, but his method of doing so actively works against his 
goal.
On Dec 6, 2011 10:51 PM, "James Condron" 
<ja...@zero-internet.org.uk<mailto:ja...@zero-internet.org.uk>> wrote:
An ISP I worked at stored logins for customer servers where the customer 
required us to be able to login to provide support.

We used a webapp on our internal network with the relevant security 
accoutrements. Its pretty standard; you login, find the server you need 
credentials for and hit a button to either launch a putty session or an RDP 
session. You can also edit passwords or view for non-windows users.

The reason tools exist is because there is a demand for them- hell, its a 
password safe. Perhaps OP should look at this type of solution.

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 6:28 AM, Gage Bystrom 
<themadichi...@gmail.com<mailto:themadichi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I'm disturbed in the first place that you want to distribute password
lists to multiple users.
I'm disturbed more so that there is no apparent cognitive dissonance
preventing you from functioning enough to have sent that email.

Someone please tell me that I'm not the only one disturbed here? And
if I am, point to me why please?

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 7:30 PM, G V 
<gvasi...@gmail.com<mailto:gvasi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> From your experience, what's the best secure and easy way to update a
> password list and distribute it to 1000 or so unix users? The users
> would have different privilege levels and different access on network.
> Throwing ideas, I can think of: pgp (difficult to maintain a separate
> file for each user), web app (would need to be sucured over ssl,
> possible password protected), usb disks (difficult to manage changes).
> Anyone using an enterprise level app (commercial or not) to "share"
> passwords to users, manage changes and so on? Any other ideas I can
> use?
>
> Thank you,
> George Vasiliu
>
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