NAME

pam_tcb - authentication, account, session, and password management PAM module for Unix with support for the tcb password shadowing scheme

DESCRIPTION

pam_tcb is a PAM module which deals with Unix accounts and provides functionality for all four PAM management groups: authentication, account management, session management, and password management. It is a successor to pam_unix and pam_pwdb.

authentication

pam_tcb relies exclusively on getpwnam(3) and getspnam(3) interfaces to obtain information necessary for user authentication. It performs password hashing with crypt_ra(3) or crypt(3). This means that pam_tcb will use NSS and will handle any password hashing method supported by the system libraries.

account management

When the account information is available via getspnam(3), the account management part of pam_tcb checks for expired accounts or passwords. It uses the shadow file entry fields as described in shadow(5). It is responsibility of applications to interpret the PAM error status and possibly invoke the password management group to get an expired password changed.

session management

By default, pam_tcb logs the opening and closing of PAM sessions via syslog(3). It uses LOG_AUTH as the syslog facility and either adds "pam_tcb: " prefix to log messages or, if the openlog option is given, sets the ident to "pam_tcb". This functionality may be disabled with the nolog option (see below).

password management

pam_chauthtok(3) performs two passes through the password management stack: PAM_PRELIM_CHECK and PAM_UPDATE_AUTHTOK. During the PAM_PRELIM_CHECK phase, pam_tcb may optionally prompt for and will always verify the old password. This allows for stacking of a password policy enforcement module such as pam_passwdqc before pam_tcb, without requiring this other module to take over performing any of the tasks of pam_tcb. The actual password change happens during the PAM_UPDATE_AUTHTOK phase.

When changing passwords, pam_tcb is able to modify the following password databases:

/etc/passwd file, see passwd(5);
/etc/shadow file, see shadow(5);
/etc/tcb/ directory structure, see tcb(5).

OPTIONS

Most of the options recognized by pam_unix or pam_pwdb are valid for pam_tcb as well and have identical meaning. There are some semantic differences though, so you are advised to browse the list below. All the boolean options are off by default. The default values of non-boolean options are given.

debug

Log debugging information via syslog(3).

audit

Log even more debugging information, including unknown usernames. This has the risk of potentially logging a password that a user could have given instead of a username.

openlog

Normally, pam_tcb will add "pam_tcb: " prefix to log messages. The openlog option disables this behavior and causes pam_tcb to call openlog(3) with ident "pam_tcb" before logging and closelog(3) afterwards.

noopenlog

If pam_tcb was compiled with ENABLE_OPENLOG, it will call openlog(3) with ident "pam_tcb" before logging and closelog(3) afterwards. The noopenlog option disables this behavior.

nolog

Suppress logging.

blank_nolog

Do not log failed authentication attempts when a blank password is tried. If this option is not used, some services, notably sshd(8), may generate false alarms.

nullok

Permit blank passwords.

use_first_pass

Don't prompt the user for passwords, take them from PAM_AUTHTOK and possibly PAM_OLDAUTHTOK items instead.

try_first_pass

Take passwords from PAM_AUTHTOK and possibly PAM_OLDAUTHTOK items, but prompt the user if the appropriate PAM item is unset.

use_authtok

Like use_first_pass, but applies to the (new) PAM_AUTHTOK only. This is intended for stacking password management modules.

authtok_type=

This option can be used to modify the password prompt when changing passwords to include the type of the password. The default is empty.

likeauth

When called as a credential setting module, return the same value as was returned during the authentication.

passwd

If set, pam_tcb may use the second field of user's "passwd" entry (usually taken from /etc/passwd) as the password hash. See below for details.

shadow

If set, pam_tcb may use the second field of user's "shadow" entry (usually taken from /etc/shadow or a tcb shadow file) as the password hash. See below for details.

write_to=

This option determines where pam_tcb should store new password hashes when changing passwords. Possible settings are: "passwd", "shadow", and "tcb". The default is "shadow".

md5

When updating a user's password, hash the new password with the obsolete FreeBSD-derived MD5-based algorithm.

prefix=

When updating a user's password, generate the salt with the specified prefix (which determines the hashing method to use). Unless the underlying libcrypt library implements a default hashing method, the default is "$2b$", which requests bcrypt, a Blowfish-based hashing method, which supports variable iteration counts.

count=

The number of iterations of an underlying cryptographic primitive to use when hashing passwords. The default is 0, which lets the selected hashing algorithm pick its default iteration count.

It is highly recommended that you override this setting. Please refer to crypt(3) for information on supported hashing methods, their prefix strings, and their count settings.

plain_crypt

Use plain crypt(3) instead of crypt_ra(3). This may be required to access hashing methods for which no reentrant implementation exists in the system libraries.

nodelay

Do not delay after an unsuccessful authentication attempt.

fork

Create child processes for accessing shadow files. Using this option one can be sure that after a call to pam_end(3) there is no sensitive data left in the process' address space. However, this option may confuse some of the more complicated applications and it has some performance overhead.

helper=

If the hashed password cannot be retrieved by pam_tcb and the UID of the user being authenticated is equal to the real UID pam_tcb runs as, pam_tcb will execute a privileged helper program to perform authentication. This option determines path to the program's binary. If an empty helper path is given, no helper will be executed. The default is /usr/lib/chkpwd/tcb_chkpwd.

OBTAINING PASSWORD HASHES

The following algorithm is used by pam_tcb to retrieve the password hash for a user:

if (passwd option is set and pw_passwd field is not equal to "x" nor "*NP*")

use pw_passwd field as the hash;
if (shadow option is set and pw_passwd field is equal to "x")
use sp_pwdp field as the hash;
if all the above failed, fail.

BUGS

The current pam_tcb implementation is not thread-safe (just like pam_unix and pam_pwdb).

SEE ALSO

crypt(3), crypt_ra(3), getpwnam(3), getspnam(3), shadow(3), login.defs(5), passwd(5), shadow(5), tcb(5), pam(8), tcb_convert(8)