PAM_TCB(8)

📦 version 1.2, in nixpkgs unstable

💖 NAME 💖

Okay so from the System Manager's Manual, this is the PAM_TCB(8) page, and the main character is pam_tcb — the authentication, account, session, and password management PAM module for Unix with support for the tcb password shadowing scheme. It’s giving all four PAM management groups, no cap. 💅

✨ 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. Iconic lineage, honestly. 👑

🔐 authentication 🔐

For authentication, pam_tcb relies exclusively on the 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. Slay. 🦋

🧾 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. Lowkey important, bestie. 🎀

🌸 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). Logging with main character energy. 💜

🗝️ 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. Two passes, one iconic workflow. 🔥

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

🎀 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. Don’t skim, bestie — this is the reading assignment. 🙈

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/libexec/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). Read that again, bestie. 😭

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

💖 That’s the whole PAM_TCB(8) page from the System Manager’s Manual — brought to you by the Openwall Project, dated July 17, 2011. Stay safe, bestie! 🫶

📦 where this page comes from