Pam may bypass the setting of Set PermitRootLogin without-password

April 7, 2015 3.6k views
Security
3a0442f41c8f0a7ebfd6e6f282775843fe41c029
By:
stevehendo34

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

# Set this to 'yes' to enable PAM authentication, account processing,
# and session processing. If this is enabled, PAM authentication will
# be allowed through the ChallengeResponseAuthentication and
# PasswordAuthentication.  Depending on your PAM configuration,
# PAM authentication via ChallengeResponseAuthentication may bypass
# the setting of "PermitRootLogin without-password".
# If you just want the PAM account and session checks to run without
# PAM authentication, then enable this but set PasswordAuthentication
# and ChallengeResponseAuthentication to 'no'.
UsePAM yes

So how do I set this so PAM to not bypass "Set PermitRootLogin without-password"
?

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1 Answer
bruns.nicholas December 30, 2015

With the default PAM settings, they shouldn't interfere with the PermitRootLogin without-password. If you already have your SSH keys set up, you can test by renaming your private key (something like mv ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/.ssh/diff_id_rsa) and it'll prompt you for a password.

For a deeper look into PAM configuration, DO wrote this article

How To Use PAM to Configure Authentication on an Ubuntu 12.04 VPS
by Justin Ellingwood
PAM, or Pluggable Authentication Modules, is a system for connecting authentication services to application requesting authentication, through the use of a consistent API. Authentication schemes can be switched out without having to reconfigure large amounts of code. In this guide, we will discuss how PAM works and give a basic explanation of how the system operates.
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