rlogin using hosts.equiv authentication failing when using MD5 hashed passwords in NIS passwd map

[Jim Collins_1]

I have an HP-UX 10.20 system which is acting as a NIS client against a RedHat 6.2 Linux NIS master. The HP-UX system has the NIS master in its /etc/hosts.equiv to allow password free access to all users rlogin'ing (rsh'ing) from the NIS master to the HP-UX. I've observed that
those users who are using MD5 hashes in the NIS passwd map fail to rlogin (they are prompted for password) to the HP-UX whereas those that who
are using old crypt hashes have no problems. I would not expect this to be a problem since the hosts.equiv entry
should eliminate any passwd related checks!? Is HP-UX assuming a certain length for the crypted passwd in the NIS passwd map and in some way concluding that the account is invalid since the MD5 hashes are much longer? Thus not allowing free access and asking for passwd (which also fails, which I expected since HP-UX's hash of the passwd won't match the MD5 hash)? Thanks.

- Jim

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

http://www.securityportal.com/cover/coverstory20000814.html

[Jim Collins_1]

Sure, sure. I've well aware of
the security implications of rsh with hosts.equiv and have been using ssh with public key auth, agents and so on for many years as replacements... however, pointing to ssh docs does not answer the question.

[T G Manikandan]

Hello,
Did you check your pam.conf file for your
authentication.

Thanks.
G Manikandan

[helmsjw]

Jim,

Did you ever find a solution for this?
I have the same problem because I have
an NIS server running under RedHat 7.2
with md5 password encryption. I think
the NIS client on HP-UX won't do md5
encryption, so the encrypted passwords
don't match and login fails. I have
asked HP about a patch for the NIS
client to possibly fix this problem,
but I don't know if they will support
it or not.

John Helms
helmsjw@photomask.com
512-310-6185