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Using a Pluggable Authentication Module Print E-mail
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Source: IBM - Posted by Bill Keys   
Host Security If you're concerned about protecting world-writeable shared directories such as /tmp or /var/tmp from abuse, a Linux® Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) can help you. The pam_namespace module creates a separate namespace for users on your system when they login. This separation is enforced by the Linux operating system so that users are protected from several types of security attacks. This article for Linux system administrators lays out the steps to enable namespaces with PAM. Have you heard about PAM? All Linux user's use PAM every time they use Linux. This article does a great job at explaining how PAM helps improve Linux user's security.

Read this full article at IBM

Comments
Not all linux users use PAM.Written by Kyle on 2008-04-04 09:41:22
I just wanted to point out a glaring error, not all linux users use PAM. Not all distros use PAM. 
 
The Unix login system is very simple, straightforward, and elegant, even when shadow was added, it didn't detract from this elegance. 
 
PAM, on the other hand, is obscenely overcomplicated, and is often solving a problem that doesn't exist.  
 
Most users currently are using linux on a system that authenticates locally only: and not to a local LDAP, MySQL, PostgresQL server either. What PAM offers to most systems is unnecessary complexity. For most users, what they think they get from PAM, can more easily be supplied by the standard Unix tools, not to mention, more easily configured & understood.

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