NAME
poppassd - Password change server for Eudora and NUPOP mail clients
DESCRIPTION
poppassd runs from inetd and listens on TCP port 106 by default. Its
sole purpose in life is to engage in short FTP-like conversations from
client applications and execute (or deny) remote password changes via
the PAM facilities configured in /etc/pam.d/poppassd. The conversation
looks something like this:
200 poppassd v1.8.4 hello, who are you?
user adconrad
200 Your password please.
pass foo
200 Your new password please.
newpass bar
200 Password changed, thank-you.
quit
200 Bye.
As can be seen from the example above, unencrypted passwords are
transmitted over the network. Because of this, it is recommended that
you use this daemon only for local loopback password changing (for
instance, from Perl, Python, or PHP web applications on the same
server) and block all non-local access to port 106, either via
tcpwrappers (/etc/hosts.deny) or with appropriate firewall rules.
If sending unencrypted passwords over the wire doesn’t bug you terribly
much (as in the case of an ISP with hundreds of POP3 mail accounts),
this daemon can provide a simple way for some of your clients (those
running mail clients that actually support this protocol) to easily
change their passwords.
FILES
/etc/pam.d/poppassd
Contains the PAM configuration for poppassd. By default on
Debian, it merely includes the common-auth and common-password
files, which should work in most cases. If this doesn’t cut it
for your site, tailor to suit.
SEE ALSO
pam(7), inetd(8), hosts.deny(5)
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Adam Conrad <adconrad@0c3.net> for the
Debian operating system.