#184 [document]: Passing pam handle securely

[Jenn Vesperman]

Re application developer's guide, version DRAFT v0.75
2001/03/18

In the sections "Session initialization" and
"Terminating sessions", it would be useful to have a
discussion of ways to securely pass the PAM handle to
the code which terminates the PAM session.

All that is required is enough information for the
application developer to do a google-search for precise
methods - a list of keywords to search on would be enough.

Thank you

Jenn V.

[Jenn Vesperman]

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The module developer's guide could use the same information
in the same place.

Thanks again.

[Andrew G. Morgan]

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I'm not sure what is being requested here. Could you
elaborate?

Thanks

Andrew

[Jenn Vesperman]

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The guide (from memory) states that the program which
terminates the PAM session may be different from the program
which initiates the PAM session.

To run the pam_close() function, the program which
terminates the session requires the PAM handle. So the
initiating program must pass the handle to the terminator.

The PAM handle can be used to access sensitive data, so it
must be passed securely.

I'd like the documentation to provide -either- some
suggestions for securely passing the PAM handle, or to
provide some sort of pointer to where the developer can find
that information.

Does that clarify the request?

(BTW: thanks for fixing my other docs bugs.)

Jenn V.

[Andrew G. Morgan]

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I'm going to punt on this one for release 0.76. The sad fact
is that
there is no convention for reconstructing session info in
another
process. And this is why most PAM applications fork() a
session
and then handle the close in the parent.

I'm hopeful that I can collect some thoughts/code for this
issue for a future release.

Cheers

Andrew

[Andrew G. Morgan]

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I guess I shouldn't actually tie documenting this to a
specific release.