disabeling null or <enter> passwords

[Unixbeheer2]

Dear All,

Is there a way to disable null,blank or passwords on a NON trusted system ?
Or is there a way to detect such passwords so that login account can be disabled ?

Thanks in advance,

Klaas Eenkhoorn

[Michael Tully]

Without the use of a trusted system, you cannot detect these values, unless you used a tool such as tiger or crack. The trusted system will only allow a certain criteria that you can assist in setting. You can still disable accounts by using the 'passwd -l' command.

[Darren Prior]

Hi Klaas,

I believe (on an untrusted 11 system) that you can't stop root from assigning null passwords to any user, but any non-root user has to abide by the restrictions listed in the passwd(1) man page - which includes a minimum length of 6 chars for a password. passwd returns a "password too short - must be at least 6 characters" error if a non-root user attempts to set a null password.

regards,

Darren.

[Michael Kelly_5]

Klaas,
detecting (and disabling) user accounts with a null/blank password is easy.

Try this:
for uacct in `awk -F: '$2 == "" {print $1}' /etc/passwd`; do
passwd -l $uacct
done

HTH,
Michael.

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

The unorthodox method would be to use a wrapper script for the passwd command. The wrapper script does the bounds check before calling the passwd command.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong