Re: GNOME keyring unlocking

[Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr>]

Le jeudi 10 octobre 2013 à 14:26 +0300, p10 a écrit :
> Thanks for the explanation , so the problem is not trivial . But it
> still stands - people are setting empty passwords to avoid entering a
> password every time + the auto-login option becomes practically obsolete
> when using the keyring. So where do I further the discussion on that - a
> bug , a blueprint ?
What are you asking for exactly? To encrypt your keyring using a
password you do not need to type at all? ;-)

If you want to secure your keyring, you'll have to type at some point a
secret information that is not stored on the system. If you don't need
to do that, anybody could access your keyring. So that's really not an
implementation issue, that's a logical one.


Regards


> Petko
>
> On Thu, 2013-10-10 at 11:33 +0100, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > On 10/10/13 11:13, p10 wrote:
> > > autologin doesn't unlock the keyring . I think I
> > > understand more or less why that's happening
> >
> > The reason is: libpam-gnome-keyring needs your password to decrypt the
> > keyring. Without your password, it just doesn't have enough information.
> >
> > >  Now my first question is - how does GDM store the password to autologin
> > > a specific user
> >
> > It doesn't. GDM (or at least, enough of GDM) is a privileged process
> > running as root with full capabilities, and can do whatever it has been
> > configured to do, including changing its uid to you without asking for a
> > password first.
> >
> > Login processes *usually* prompt for, and check, an "ordinary password"
> > first - but that's not required. They can equally well use a
> > one-time-password scheme like OATH[1], query a fingerprint reader[2], or
> > just say "yes" regardless[3]. When GDM has been configured to
> > auto-login, its policy for that user's login is "just say yes".
> >
> > > when AFAIK the kernel handles user login services
> >
> > The kernel doesn't handle user login services (at least, not on typical
> > Unix OSs like Linux and *BSD). The kernel allows processes with
> > appropriate capabilities[4] to become another user. That's all gdm has
> > to do.
> >
> >     S
> >
> > [1] more secure than ordinary passwords
> > [2] not actually very secure
> > [3] not at all secure
> > [4] approximately "running as root", although on a modern system,
> >     Linux capabilities (POSIX.1e draft capabilities) are also involved
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > desktop-devel-list mailing list
> > desktop-devel-list gnome org
> > https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
>
>
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