Account lockout support in Solaris 10 when authenticating againstKerberos
Nicolas Williams
Nicolas.Williams at sun.com
Tue Dec 11 09:55:09 EST 2007
On Tue, Dec 11, 2007 at 08:35:07AM -0600, Douglas E. Engert wrote:
> But using PAM to lockout a user, is per machine.
> If you are trying to avoid password guesses, the user could
> try another machine, and get another N guesses. Better then
> nothing, but maybe not what you really want.
>
> As Russ points out below, maybe some intrusion detection system
> might also be in order, with PAM notifying the IDS.
Then compromised clients can DoS your whole domain. But then, if you're
implementing an N-strikes-you're-locked policy then they could anyways
(which is why account lockout after N failed logins is a bad idea,
particularly if you don't unlock the account automatically after a short
period of time).
Slowing down folks who are trying to guess passwords is a good thing.
Letting them lock out all your user accounts is not. The folks in
charge of writing corporate security policies need to take this into
account. N-strikes-you're-locked is bad. N-strikes-we-slow-you-down is
good.
Nico
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