From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 95; DNAUU234ENU01PCP) Description of problem: I noticed that creating a user with 'useradd' and the '-p' option (which gives the new user a default password) does not hash the password in /etc/shadow: root@hogs /# useradd -p h4x0r lordspankatron root@hogs /# tail -2 /etc/shadow johnnyuser:$1$JiUjVlWa$gnfXvKsHUxnjoIPGmkt/1.:11562:0:99999:7:-1:- 1:2147482240 lordspankatron:h4x0r:11562:0:99999:7::: This bug doesn't seem exploitible for two reasons: 1.) The user cannot log in with the supplied password because MD5( password_supplied_at_login_prompt ) != unhashed_password_in_shadow_file 2.) /etc/shadow exists in mode 0400, so no one besides the super-user can read it anyway. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. useradd -p aDefaultPassword aNewUser 2. tail -1 /etc/shadow 3. Look at the password field. Actual Results: The password is not hashed -- it is stored in plain-text. Expected Results: The password should have been hashed. Additional info:
This doesn't really seem like a bug; useradd states in the man page that it expects the crypt(3) or MD5-hash returned string as an argument to the -p option, not the password in plaintext. RTFM.