Bugtraq: Re: PAM applications running as root (Was Re: WebTrends Enterprise

[alan () LXORGUK UKUU ORG UK (Alan Cox)]

> It is NOT a requirement of the PAM framework that application be running as
> root.  There are two cases though that make login type applications need to
> run as root.
>
>       1) The password is stored in /etc/shadow which only root can read
>          If the password was in NIS/NIS+/LDAP then the authentication
>          could succeed are an ordinary user.
This is not correct either. A good PAM implementation supports shadow
authentication (although not update) via setuid helpers

Alan