🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1259@eplunix.UUCP> raoul@eplunix.UUCP (Nico Garcia) writes:
>In article <BssuF5.G4@ibmpcug.co.uk>, gtoal@ibmpcug.co.uk (Graham Toal) writes:
>> Has anyone heard a rumour circulating that some crackers have found a
>> trapdoor password that lets people on to Next machines with root
>> privs?  I told the person I heard it from that it sounded like total
>
>I heard this one too: I was told that there was a "backdoor". This struck me
>as reasonable, since the NeXT was developed for fun and the NetInfo programs
                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's a good one, I'm sure the Wall Street Firms using it to develop
trading programs would certainly call it "fun"...

[...blah blah]
>Upon checking, my rumor source forwarded a copy of a note from a private bbs
>that complained of security *holes* on NeXT, but made no mention of actual
>backdoors. I then explained to my rumor source the distinction between the
>two, and have heard nothing further.

As with any computer, the NeXT has it's share of security holes, you're kidding
yourself if you think you most computers are secure out of the box.

As for whether the NeXT has a "backdoor" password, I *REALLY* *REALLY*
*REALLY* doubt it. I would wager this rumor is one of those permuted
rumors, starting out as someone hearing about the loginwindow special
account names (which are undocumented)

The loginwindow program used to login on the console has two special account
names "exit" and "console", exit will stop and restart the windowserver
(handy for some uses) and console will quit the windowserver and bring
up the system console upon which you login in via a getty process
running on /dev/console.  This "backdoor" password rumor is very
likely to have mutated from this feature of the loginwindow program.

la la la,
-- 
:: Christopher Lloyd :: a74k110@titan.ucc.umass.edu :: Yrrid, Inc. ::