Very Computer

My securty group, (Who haven't a clue how to spell unix), are trying
to force us to use mixed case account names on our Sun systems. This
goes against everything I've ever done in my past 12 years as a unix
sysadmin (Solaris, HP, AIX, SCO, Tru64).

Does anyone have any suggestions to support my case against it, other
than it's just the way things are done?

Garry

The user account names are visible in /etc/password.  Therefore, a
lowercase + uppercase combination in user account names does not
increase the overall system security.  However, it's good to throw
people completely off once in a while.  You have to be careful not to
rename root account to Root to comply with the new security mandate.

Anonymous

I can't imagine that Solaris will care, as long as you leave root
alone;  but you might have trouble with applications that understand
user names.  Make sure that apps, DBMS's, etc are OK with mixed case
user names before you go there.

Karl

|My securty group, (Who haven't a clue how to spell unix), are trying
|to force us to use mixed case account names on our Sun systems. This
|goes against everything I've ever done in my past 12 years as a unix
|sysadmin (Solaris, HP, AIX, SCO, Tru64).
|
|Does anyone have any suggestions to support my case against it, other
|than it's just the way things are done?

If you have older Unix systems (like Solaris before 2.6), logging in
to an account name starting with an uppercase letter may cause the
system to assume you're on an archaic terminal with no lower case
characters and do bizarre things in response.

--
________________________________________________________________________

 http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~alanc/   *   http://blogs.sun.com/alanc/
  Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

You will also need to make sure that your mailer doesn't downcase the
final username which happens on occasion (depends on the mailer
flags)

Casper
--
Expressed in this posting are my opinions.  They are in no way related
to opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems.
Statements on Sun products included here are not gospel and may
be fiction rather than truth.

Learn to spell "security" before you criticize your security group for
not being able to spell Unix!

Mixed case passwords are highly recommended.  Requiring mixed case
account names is ridiculous!  There is nothing secret about an account
name; it shows up on your screen when you log in, cat /etc/passwd will
show all the account names to anyone who has access to the command line,
account names are usually also the user's email address, they tend to
show up on the banner pages from the printer, etc, etc.

Account names are public information on a system. Having them obfuscated
achieves exactly NO added security, some deviation from common practice,
and a moderate degree of annoyance for the user.

For security reasons, it's a complete non-starter. If they have other
reasons, then _maybe_ I'd let them at least explain them.

Colin