[ale] passwd and shadow

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Tue, 2008-06-17 at 11:09 -0400, Terry Bailey wrote:
> Hi,

> After booting, do copies of the passwd and shadow files reside in RAM?

	Meaning leftovers from the previous boot or what?

	In principle, sure.  They are simple files which will be cached by the
file system when they are accessed.  The passwd file itself isn't
particularly sensitive.  The shadow file could be sensitive but, as long
as people are using and enforcing strong passwords, that should be too
bad since only root can access kmem on the running system.  Anyone with
access to kmem can be presumed to have access to shadow.

	What's the problem that is concerning you?

> Thanks,

> Terry Bailey

	Mike
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