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Bug 1139318 - useradd allows usernames that break many basic tools
Summary: useradd allows usernames that break many basic tools
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NEXTRELEASE
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
Classification: Red Hat
Component: shadow-utils
Version: 7.0
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Linux
unspecified
low
Target Milestone: rc
: ---
Assignee: Tomas Mraz
QA Contact: BaseOS QE Security Team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-09-08 16:04 UTC by Marcel Kolaja
Modified: 2018-12-06 17:58 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2014-09-10 13:48:46 UTC
Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Marcel Kolaja 2014-09-08 16:04:27 UTC
Description of problem:
useradd allows digit only usernames. That, however, breaks some basic tools that take both username and UID as their argument, like setfacl or getent:

[root@rhel7 ~]# grep 500001 /etc/passwd
500001:x:1001:1001::/home/500001:/bin/bash
test:x:500001:1001::/tmp:/bin/bash
[root@rhel7 ~]# getfacl /tmp/test 
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: tmp/test
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
group::r--
other::r--

[root@rhel7 ~]# setfacl -m u:500001:r /tmp/test 
[root@rhel7 ~]# getfacl /tmp/test 
getfacl: Removing leading '/' from absolute path names
# file: tmp/test
# owner: root
# group: root
user::rw-
user:test:r--
group::r--
mask::r--
other::r--

[root@rhel7 ~]# getent passwd 500001
test:x:500001:1001::/tmp:/bin/bash
[root@rhel7 ~]# 

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
shadow-utils-4.1.5.1-13.el7.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. try to create a user with digits only username

Actual results:
The user gets created.

Expected results:
The user does not get created and appropriate error message is printed (useradd: invalid user name).

Additional info:
N/A

Comment 3 Tomas Mraz 2014-09-09 15:25:15 UTC
I do not think we should change this behavior in already released RHEL. In general the UNIX philosophy is that the user is allowed to shoot himself into his foot with the UNIX commands. :)

However I agree that all numeric user names should be disallowed in Fedora and future major RHEL releases.


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