ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

Hi,

to establish a connection to the N900 from my laptop I configured usb-networking as described here:

http://wiki.maemo.org/N900_USB_Networking

ssh root@N900 works fine.

To make
ssh user@N900
working I had to unlock the user-account with
usermod -U user

Is this a security risk?

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

Remote root logins are already allowed, so no (unless your user password is really weak).

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

Yes it is, but only for the user account. But every little security hole in an application might widen that gap a little.
Why didn't you just give user a password?
As root:

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

It is almost as (un)safe if one just ssh in as root.
You have probably gainroot installed, so getting user access means root access also.
Actually having two passwords which either one leads to root access is less secure than having only one.

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

Using a plain password on a Maemo device is vulnerable.

It does not use shadow password files and the default crypto is a very weak Traditional DES encryption which is very easy to break. Since passwords are limited to max 8 characters it also does not matter how large or 'strong' you make your passwords.

/etc/passwd is readable for everybody, so basically anyone that can get a hold of your device for 5 mins can email/copy the passwd file and use a bruteforce cracker to find your passwords in a matter of hours.

The only thing that I could recommend is keeping your /etc/passwd file empty (aka do not use passwd) and instead copy your ssh public key to the device and use that for logging in remotely.

p.s. sorry for bumping this thread... forum uses MM-DD-YYYY which is extremely confusion....

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

Actually, it uses MM-DD-YY (two digit year) which is even more than extremely confusing. The only date order unambiguous world wide is YYYY-MM-DD

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

You can change the date display format your control panel settings.

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

Thank you, but I do not see any option that provides ISO 8601 date order, which besides being an international standard, is the only date order that sorts sensibly, and the only order that is unambiguous worldwide, because, as far as I know, no one uses YYYY-DD-MM

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

It's not ideal but if you need to run something as user:

Re: ssh-ing into N900 as user
 

I use it.
The people I work with use it.:)

But not on the n900.:mad:

Nokia deliberately left this out of the n900.:confused:

If you do manage to get ISO8601 working in a hack,
it will brick your device permanently.:eek: