Bug 74254 - root account is never locked out by pam_tally
Summary: root account is never locked out by pam_tally
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: pam
Version: 8.0
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Nalin Dahyabhai
QA Contact: Jay Turner
URL: even_deny_root_account not recognized...
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2002-09-18 19:21 UTC by Steve Fox
Modified: 2015-01-08 00:00 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2003-04-22 15:14:05 UTC
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Steve Fox 2002-09-18 19:21:42 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.5 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020809

Description of problem:
The pam_tally docs say that using even_deny_root_account should lock the root
account even the invalid password attempt is greater than the set deny limit.
This parameter shows up as an unknown option in /var/log/messages

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Edit /etc/pam.d/system-auth to include these lines:

auth        required      /lib/security/pam_securetty.so
auth        required      /lib/security/pam_nologin.so
auth        required      /lib/security/pam_shells.so
auth        required      /lib/security/pam_pwdb.so
auth        required      /lib/security/pam_tally.so onerr=fail no_magic_root
even_deny_root_account

account     required      /lib/security/pam_tally.so deny=5 reset no_magic_root

2. Try to log in as root from either a 'su' or from the console 6 or more times
with an invalid password.

3. Try logging in again using the proper password. It works?
	

Actual Results:  I was able to log in even though the root account should have
been locked out.

Expected Results:  root should not be able to log in.

Additional info:

/var/log/messages shows:

Sep 18 11:06:45 iiosb su(pam_unix)[520]: authentication failure;
logname=drfickle uid=506 euid=0 tty= ruser=drfickle rhost=  user=drfickle
Sep 18 11:06:47 iiosb pam_tally[520]: pam_tally: unknown option;
even_deny_root_account

pam-0.75-40

Comment 1 Kjartan Maraas 2003-04-03 08:50:36 UTC
Have you tried the latest pam errata? Does that behave similarly?

Comment 2 Steve Fox 2003-04-22 15:14:05 UTC
It looks like this was a PEBCAK issue. I must have misinterpreted the
documentation. I am now using pam-0.75-46.8.0 and it is working proper.

Here are the relevant sections of /etc/pam.d/system-auth

auth        required      /lib/security/pam_tally.so onerr=fail no_magic_root
auth        required      /lib/security/pam_env.so
auth        sufficient    /lib/security/pam_unix.so likeauth nullok
auth        required      /lib/security/pam_deny.so
                                                                               
                                             
account     required      /lib/security/pam_tally.so deny=5 reset no_magic_root
even_deny_root_account
account     required      /lib/security/pam_unix.so

I had put even_deny_root_account in the auth section instead of account. Using
the above configuration it works as expected.

Thanks.


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