[CentOS] Another Fedora decision

Thu Feb 5 22:39:20 UTC 2015
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Thu, February 5, 2015 4:29 pm, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 4:19 PM, Keith Keller
> <kkeller at wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote:
>
>>> On C5 the default appears to be:-
>>>
>>>       -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1220 Jan 31 03:04 shadow
>>
>> It is much more likely that someone has screwed up your system.  I think
>> even CentOS 4 had shadow as 400.  And what on earth would the point be
>> in having a world-readable shadow file?!?  The whole point of having a
>> shadow file is to keep password hashes out of /etc/passwd so that people
>> can't read it.  It would be nonsensical to then make the shadow file
>> readable.
>
> Yes, /etc/shadow would have always been readable only by root by
> default.   The interesting question here is whether an intruder did
> it, clumsily leaving evidence behind, or whether it is just a local
> change from following some bad advice about things that need to be
> changed - or running some script to make those changes.  The latter
> seems more likely to me.
>

Be it me, I would consider box compromised. All done on/from that box
since probable day it happened compromised as well. If there is no way to
establish the day, then since that system originally build. With full
blown sweeping up the consequences. Finding really-really-really
convincing proof it is not a result of compromise (and yes, fight one's
wishful thinking!).

But again, it's your money in your bank (and/or whatever else could get
into jeopardy).

Valeri

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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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