main/busybox: Busybox /bin/su and /bin/login bypass PAM configuration when using linux-pam
On systems using linux-pam
, where a more restrictive authentication mechanism is used—such as pam_yubico.so
—the Busybox binaries /bin/su
and /bin/login
are not PAM-aware and bypass the PAM configuration. This may be a vulnerability on some systems, since su
cannot be disabled without also disabling its multi-call binary /bin/bbsuid
.
Busybox could be built with PAM support by setting CONFIG_PAM=y
in its configuration. Adding the packages busybox-pam
and .busybox-suid-pam
would fix the issue
Alternatively, the shadow
package is PAM aware and provides replacement binaries for su
, login
, passwd
, and chpasswd
. But removing busybox-suid
is still problematic, and as long as it's available on the system, it may be a vulnerability.
Edited by Jakub Jirutka