/etc/shadow Locked accounts

[Rick Stevens]

On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 14:19 -0600, redhat at buglecreek.com wrote:
> On a RedHat ES 4 system I was checking for null passwords in /etc/shadow
> and came across a "x" in the encrypted password field (2nd field) for  a
> few accounts.  I have seen "!" "!!" and "*" for locked accounts but have
> not come across a "x". The x does seem to lock the accounts however,
> which is what I want.  Anyone know what program may have placed the x in
> the field? The "usermod -L" and "passwd -l" commands does not seem to. 
> Also, does it have the same effect as "!"?  I was just curious if anyone
> else has seen this.

Smells like a hack job to me.  /etc/shadow should have an encrypted
password or a single or double "!" in it.  It should NEVER have a single
character.  It should render the password invalid, however, as there
is no encryption system I know of that would generate a single character
as the encrypted string.

> Just to clarify, I am not referring to the /etc/passwd file.

Yes, we know.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-   To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.    -
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