Re: remote login to root

[Adam Tauno Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Please excuse the newbie question.  This is my third day playing
>>> with linux.  When I telnet to my linux server, I am not able to
>>> login as root. Is this a security feature?
>So I am curious, how is typing in "su" and a password less secure than
>logging in directly?  I will grant you that you need to know two logins,
>but the passwords are still going across the net in cleartext.

It's just a little more security through obscurity, but my no means "more 
secure" in the true sense.  Any traffic passing in clear text is a potential 
problem, and telnet is a rather serious one in most cases.  The truly best way 
to do something like this is either via a VPN like PPTP or ipsec or SSH.


> By the way, the answer to your questions is that the file /etc/securetty
> contains a list of ttys that permit a root login. What you do with the
> knowledge is up to you.

And their are valid reasons for changing /etc/securetty,  you just need to be 
sure that your reason is one of them, before you do it.  I often lower the 
security in /etc/securetty and tighten TCP wrappers as to who can even connect 
to the host.