On Tue, Nov 28, 2017 at 06:59:06PM -0500, Ian Sutton wrote:
> This is a highly theoretical and experimental mitigation which stops the
> root password on newly upgraded/installed systems from being an empty
> string. The thinking is that by not shipping an operating system with a
> known root password, certain classes of attacks involving logging into
> the root account might be avoided. I would like some feedback from the
> cryptography team as well as NIST finalists in order to better ascertain
> the implications of this behaviour.
Hmm, but afaiks, this is already done on install. What does you diff change?
-Otto
>
> Index: src/distrib/miniroot/install.sub
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvs/src/distrib/miniroot/install.sub,v
> retrieving revision 1.1032
> diff -u -p -r1.1032 install.sub
> --- src/distrib/miniroot/install.sub 8 Aug 2017 07:14:05 -0000 1.1032
> +++ src/distrib/miniroot/install.sub 28 Nov 2017 23:43:56 -0000
> @@ -2732,12 +2732,6 @@ do_install() {
>
> echo
>
> + while :; do
> + ask_password "Password for root account?"
> + _rootpass="$_password"
> + [[ -n "$_password" ]] && break
> + echo "The root password must be set."
> + done
>
> # Ask for the root user public ssh key during autoinstall.
> _rootkey=
