System Administration Guide: Security Services

Password Management

With SEAM installed, you now have two passwords: your regular Solaris password, and a Kerberos password. You can make both passwords the same, or they can be different.

Non-Kerberized commands, such as login, are typically set up through PAM to authenticate with both Kerberos and UNIX. If you have different passwords, you must provide both passwords to log on with the appropriate authentication. However, if both passwords are the same, the first password you enter for UNIX is also accepted by Kerberos.

Unfortunately, using the same password for both Kerberos and UNIX can compromise security. That is, if someone discovers your Kerberos password, then your UNIX password is no longer a secret. However, using the same passwords for UNIX and Kerberos is still more secure than in a site without Kerberos, because passwords in a Kerberos environment are not sent across the network. Usually, your site will have a policy to help you determine your options.

Your Kerberos password is the only way Kerberos can verify your identity. If someone discovers your Kerberos password, Kerberos security becomes meaningless, because that person can masquerade as you. That person can send email that comes from “you,” read, edit, or delete your files, or log into other hosts as you. No one will be able to tell the difference. For this reason, it is vital that you choose a good password and keep it secret. You should never reveal your password to anyone else, not even your system administrator. Additionally, you should change your password frequently, particularly any time that you believe someone might have discovered it.

Advice on Choosing a Password

Your password can include almost any character that you can type. The main exceptions are the Control keys and the Return key. A good password is a password that you can remember readily, but which no one else can easily guess. Examples of bad passwords include the following:

Words that can be found in a dictionary
Any common or popular name
The name of a famous person or character
Your name or user name in any form (for example: your name spelled backward, repeated twice, and so forth)
A spouse's name, child's name, or pet's name
Your birth date or a relative's birth date
Your social security number, driver's license number, passport number, or other similar identifying number
Any sample password that appears in this manual or any other manual

A good password is at least eight characters long. Moreover, a password should include a mix of characters, such as uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation marks. Examples of passwords that would be good if they didn't appear in this manual include the following:

Acronyms, such as “I2LMHinSF” (which is recalled as “I too left my heart in San Francisco”)
Easy-to-pronounce nonsense words, such as “WumpaBun” or “WangDangdoodle!”
Deliberately misspelled phrases, such as “6o'cluck” or “RrriotGrrrlsRrrule!”

Caution –

Don't use these examples. Passwords that appear in manuals are the first passwords that an intruder will try.

Changing Your Password

You can change your Kerberos password in two ways:

With the usual UNIX passwd command. With SEAM installed, the Solaris passwd command also automatically prompts for a new Kerberos password.

The advantage of using passwd instead of kpasswd is that you can set both passwords (UNIX and Kerberos) at the same time. However, you generally do not have to change both passwords with passwd. Often, you can change only your UNIX password and leave the Kerberos password untouched, or vice-versa.

Note –
The behavior of passwd depends on how the PAM module is configured. You might be required to change both passwords in some configurations. For some sites, the UNIX password must be changed, while other sites require the Kerberos password to change.
With the kpasswd command. kpasswd is very similar to passwd. One difference is that kpasswd changes only Kerberos passwords. You must use passwd if you want to change your UNIX password.

Another difference is that kpasswd can change a password for a Kerberos principal that is not a valid UNIX user. For example, david/admin is a Kerberos principal, but not an actual UNIX user, so you must use kpasswd instead of passwd.

After you change your password, it takes some time for the change to propagate through a system (especially over a large network). Depending on how your system is set up, this delay might take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or more. If you need to get new Kerberos tickets shortly after you change your password, try the new password first. If the new password doesn't work, try again using the old password.

Kerberos V5 allows system administrators to set criteria about allowable passwords for each user. Such criteria is defined by the policy set for each user (or by a default policy). See Administering Policies for more on policies.

For example, suppose that user jennifer's policy (call it jenpol) mandates that passwords be at least eight letters long and include a mix of at least two kinds of characters. kpasswd will therefore reject an attempt to use “sloth” as a password.

% kpasswd
kpasswd: Changing password for jennifer@ENG.EXAMPLE.COM.
Old password:   <jennifer types her existing password>
kpasswd: jennifer@ENG.EXAMPLE.COM's password is controlled by
the policy jenpol
which requires a minimum of 8 characters from at least 2 classes 
(the five classes are lowercase, uppercase, numbers, punctuation,
and all other characters).
New password: <jennifer types  'sloth'>
New password (again):  <jennifer re-types 'sloth'>
kpasswd: New password is too short.
Please choose a password which is at least 4 characters long.

Here, jennifer uses “slothrop49” as a password. “slothrop49” meets the criteria, because it is over eight letters long and contains two different kinds of characters (numbers and lowercase letters).

% kpasswd
kpasswd: Changing password for jennifer@ENG.EXAMPLE.COM.
Old password:  <jennifer types her existing password>
kpasswd: jennifer@ENG.EXAMPLE.COM's password is controlled by
the policy jenpol
which requires a minimum of 8 characters from at least 2 classes 
(the five classes are lowercase, uppercase, numbers, punctuation,
and all other characters).
New password:  <jennifer types  'slothrop49'>
New password (again):  <jennifer re-types 'slothrop49'>
Kerberos password changed.

Examples—Changing Your Password

In the following example, user david changes both his UNIX password and Kerberos password with passwd.

% passwd
	passwd:  Changing password for david
	Enter login (NIS+) password:         <type the current UNIX password>
	New password:                        <type the new UNIX password>
	Re-enter password:                   <confirm the new UNIX password>
	Old KRB5 password:                   <type the current Kerberos password>
	New KRB5 password:                   <type the new Kerberos password>
	Re-enter new KRB5 password:          <confirm the new Kerberos password>

In the preceding example passwd asks for both the UNIX password and the Kerberos password. However, if try_first_pass is set in the PAM module, the Kerberos password is automatically set to the UNIX password. This is the default configuration. In that case, user david must use kpasswd to set his Kerberos password to something else, as shown next.

This example shows user david changing only his Kerberos password with kpasswd.

% kpasswd
kpasswd: Changing password for david@ENG.EXAMPLE.COM.
Old password:           <type the current Kerberos password>
New password:           <type the new Kerberos password>
New password (again):   <confirm the new Kerberos password>
Kerberos password changed.

In this example, user david changes the password for the Kerberos principal david/admin (which is not a valid UNIX user). He must use kpasswd.

% kpasswd david/admin
kpasswd:  Changing password for david/admin.
Old password:		   	     <type the current Kerberos password>
New password:			       <type the new Kerberos password>
New password (again):	   <type the new Kerberos password>
Kerberos password changed.