On Wed, 16 Aug 1995, Paul L. Bradshaw wrote:

> For the ADSM Unix* clients you can run with an option of pw=generate.  This
> will keep the ADSM password in a secure file, and will use it to perform
> ADSM connects.  The pw will also be updated automatically.  This solution
> works good where access to the machine is protected using standard Unix
> security.

A possible pitfall is that the use of the pw=generate meachnism changes
the semantics:

If you do specify the password, ADSM treats you as root user, i.e. it
  allows you to work for all Unix users, loading their files up and down
  (of course only those files Unix allows you to read or write). But you
  can reload another user's file into your own directory.

If you enter the ADSM client via a generated password, ADSM allows you
  to operate only on the files you own. This is reasonable because you do
  not want that user A can reload user B's files into user A's directory.
  For regular scheduled backups, this is probably not what you want.

This feature is not documented.

For regular backups of the entire file system, you have to live with the
passwords revealed as described. As a consequence, you should make sure
that the backup is performed on a machine where no normal user has access,
otherwise all backed up files are open to the public (for reading only).

In the answer to a PMR some time ago, the fact that some Unix systems,
among them AIX, have only a short time window during which the password is
revealed, was considered enough protection. And this although a fair share
of Unix security vulnerabilities is due to exactly such race conditions.
On other Unix systems, such as HP-UX, the time window is arbitrarily
large. When I asked DFN-CERT (the German CERT, i.e. security advisory
board) for advice in this situation, they expressed a certain amount of
astonishment about the underlying security philosophy.

In other words: be careful.

Best regards,

Helmut Richter

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