On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 9:41 AM, <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote: >> I'm new to centralized user authentication, and I want to learn how to >> do it. I've heard that NIS is a deprecated technology, and that one >> should favour LDAP over it. I'd be curious if someone could explain the >> facts behind this (or even if it's true or not). > > NIS is *very* insecure and I *think* uses clear text (it was a kinder, > gentler age). NIS+ is slightly better, but not a whole lot. LDAP is > expecting encryption, at least SSL. That's the heart of it... NIS was fine in a younger and more innocent day :) NIS+ was ostensibly more secure but was a pain to get quite perfect. In many of the shops I visited that were using NIS+ there were lots of misconfigurations that exposed more than planned.