freebsd stable - Mar 2004 - /etc/login.access suspicious statement

This is 4.9-STABLE.

In /etc/login.access I find these lines:

   # Disallow non-local logins to privileged accounts (group wheel).
   #
   #-:wheel:ALL EXCEPT LOCAL .win.tue.nl

What is the ".win.tue.nl" doing here?

Is somebody at ".win.tue.nl" hoping for an innocent user to uncomment
this and allow login permission to the machine...;)?

Well, at least the comment explanation in the line above does not include
the effect of the extra ".win.tue.nl". I'm a little suspicious
here.

Regards,
Rob.

On Fri, Mar 19, 2004 at 08:10:51PM +0900, Rob wrote:
> In /etc/login.access I find these lines:
> 
>   # Disallow non-local logins to privileged accounts (group wheel).
>   #
>   #-:wheel:ALL EXCEPT LOCAL .win.tue.nl
> 
> What is the ".win.tue.nl" doing here?
> 
> Is somebody at ".win.tue.nl" hoping for an innocent user to
uncomment
> this and allow login permission to the machine...;)?
Well it has suprised me in the past as well, even if I work at .win.tue.nl :)

It boils down to the fact that the author of the tcpwrappers, Wietse Venema,
once worked at our department (the Faculty of Mathematics & Computer Science
of Eindhoven Technical University). He chose to document his wrappers using
his local examples. These are just those examples.

But it got me as well -- when I tried to determine what I'd changed locally
a
grep of 'win.tue.nl' showed up far more files than I had ever touched :)

In any case, for political correctness the examples could be changed to the
formal example domain names (example.org iirc). I just don't think anyone
was
bothered enough to do that.

HTH,

--Stijn (@win.tue.nl :)

-- 
"Diane, 2:15 in the afternoon, November 14. Entering town of Twin Peaks.
 Five miles south of the Canadian border, twelve miles west of the state
 line. Never seen so many trees in my life. As W.C. Fields would say, I'd
 rather be here than Philadelphia."
		-- Special Agent Dale Cooper, "Twin Peaks"
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Hi Rob

Rob wrote:
> 
> This is 4.9-STABLE.
> 
> In /etc/login.access I find these lines:
> 
>   # Disallow non-local logins to privileged accounts (group wheel).
>   #
>   #-:wheel:ALL EXCEPT LOCAL .win.tue.nl
> 
> What is the ".win.tue.nl" doing here?
It simply serves as an example written by guido@ the author.

In my experience, people sometimes use their university's, employer's or
personal domain name as examples in configuration files. It is nothing
else but a harmless I-was-here tag from the author.


regards,
	Thomas