henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (04/17/84)
Implemented an idea that occurred to me a little while ago: a separate uid (and gid) for the password file. This is better than having it owned by bin, because it means that compromising bin's security (e.g. by some hole in a setuid-bin program, of which there are several) (programs, not holes!) no longer compromises the security of the entire system. The passwd program's ownership has been changed to match, as has (sigh) the ownership of /etc, which has to be writeable to the passwd program so it can create lock files and temporaries there. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry