1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
2 <!DOCTYPE refentry PUBLIC "-//Samba-Team//DTD DocBook V4.2-Based Variant V1.0//EN" "http://www.samba.org/samba/DTD/samba-doc">
3 <refentry id="smbpasswd.5">
6 <refentrytitle>smbpasswd</refentrytitle>
7 <manvolnum>5</manvolnum>
12 <refname>smbpasswd</refname>
13 <refpurpose>The Samba encrypted password file</refpurpose>
17 <para><filename>smbpasswd</filename></para>
21 <title>DESCRIPTION</title>
23 <para>This tool is part of the <citerefentry><refentrytitle>samba</refentrytitle>
24 <manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry> suite.</para>
26 <para>smbpasswd is the Samba encrypted password file. It contains
27 the username, Unix user id and the SMB hashed passwords of the
28 user, as well as account flag information and the time the
29 password was last changed. This file format has been evolving with
30 Samba and has had several different formats in the past. </para>
34 <title>FILE FORMAT</title>
36 <para>The format of the smbpasswd file used by Samba 2.2
37 is very similar to the familiar Unix <filename>passwd(5)</filename>
38 file. It is an ASCII file containing one line for each user. Each field
39 ithin each line is separated from the next by a colon. Any entry
40 beginning with '#' is ignored. The smbpasswd file contains the
41 following information for each user: </para>
46 <listitem><para> This is the user name. It must be a name that
47 already exists in the standard UNIX passwd file. </para>
53 <listitem><para>This is the UNIX uid. It must match the uid
54 field for the same user entry in the standard UNIX passwd file.
55 If this does not match then Samba will refuse to recognize
56 this smbpasswd file entry as being valid for a user.
62 <term>Lanman Password Hash</term>
63 <listitem><para>This is the LANMAN hash of the user's password,
64 encoded as 32 hex digits. The LANMAN hash is created by DES
65 encrypting a well known string with the user's password as the
66 DES key. This is the same password used by Windows 95/98 machines.
67 Note that this password hash is regarded as weak as it is
68 vulnerable to dictionary attacks and if two users choose the
69 same password this entry will be identical (i.e. the password
70 is not "salted" as the UNIX password is). If the user has a
71 null password this field will contain the characters "NO PASSWORD"
72 as the start of the hex string. If the hex string is equal to
73 32 'X' characters then the user's account is marked as
74 <constant>disabled</constant> and the user will not be able to
75 log onto the Samba server. </para>
77 <para><emphasis>WARNING !!</emphasis> Note that, due to
78 the challenge-response nature of the SMB/CIFS authentication
79 protocol, anyone with a knowledge of this password hash will
80 be able to impersonate the user on the network. For this
81 reason these hashes are known as <emphasis>plain text
82 equivalents</emphasis> and must <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> be made
83 available to anyone but the root user. To protect these passwords
84 the smbpasswd file is placed in a directory with read and
85 traverse access only to the root user and the smbpasswd file
86 itself must be set to be read/write only by root, with no
87 other access. </para></listitem>
92 <term>NT Password Hash</term>
93 <listitem><para>This is the Windows NT hash of the user's
94 password, encoded as 32 hex digits. The Windows NT hash is
95 created by taking the user's password as represented in
96 16-bit, little-endian UNICODE and then applying the MD4
97 (internet rfc1321) hashing algorithm to it. </para>
99 <para>This password hash is considered more secure than
100 the LANMAN Password Hash as it preserves the case of the
101 password and uses a much higher quality hashing algorithm.
102 However, it is still the case that if two users choose the same
103 password this entry will be identical (i.e. the password is
104 not "salted" as the UNIX password is). </para>
106 <para><emphasis>WARNING !!</emphasis>. Note that, due to
107 the challenge-response nature of the SMB/CIFS authentication
108 protocol, anyone with a knowledge of this password hash will
109 be able to impersonate the user on the network. For this
110 reason these hashes are known as <emphasis>plain text
111 equivalents</emphasis> and must <emphasis>NOT</emphasis> be made
112 available to anyone but the root user. To protect these passwords
113 the smbpasswd file is placed in a directory with read and
114 traverse access only to the root user and the smbpasswd file
115 itself must be set to be read/write only by root, with no
116 other access. </para></listitem>
121 <term>Account Flags</term>
122 <listitem><para>This section contains flags that describe
123 the attributes of the users account. This field is bracketed by
124 '[' and ']' characters and is always 13 characters in length
125 (including the '[' and ']' characters).
126 The contents of this field may be any of the following characters:
130 <listitem><para><emphasis>U</emphasis> - This means
131 this is a "User" account, i.e. an ordinary user.</para></listitem>
133 <listitem><para><emphasis>N</emphasis> - This means the
134 account has no password (the passwords in the fields LANMAN
135 Password Hash and NT Password Hash are ignored). Note that this
136 will only allow users to log on with no password if the <parameter>
137 null passwords</parameter> parameter is set in the
138 <citerefentry><refentrytitle>smb.conf</refentrytitle>
139 <manvolnum>5</manvolnum></citerefentry> config file. </para></listitem>
141 <listitem><para><emphasis>D</emphasis> - This means the account
142 is disabled and no SMB/CIFS logins will be allowed for this user. </para></listitem>
144 <listitem><para><emphasis>X</emphasis> - This means the password
145 does not expire. </para></listitem>
147 <listitem><para><emphasis>W</emphasis> - This means this account
148 is a "Workstation Trust" account. This kind of account is used
149 in the Samba PDC code stream to allow Windows NT Workstations
150 and Servers to join a Domain hosted by a Samba PDC. </para>
154 <para>Other flags may be added as the code is extended in future.
155 The rest of this field space is filled in with spaces. For further
156 information regarding the flags that are supported please refer to the
157 man page for the <command>pdbedit</command> command.</para>
163 <term>Last Change Time</term>
164 <listitem><para>This field consists of the time the account was
165 last modified. It consists of the characters 'LCT-' (standing for
166 "Last Change Time") followed by a numeric encoding of the UNIX time
167 in seconds since the epoch (1970) that the last change was made.
172 <para>All other colon separated fields are ignored at this time.</para>
176 <title>VERSION</title>
178 <para>This man page is correct for version 3.0 of
179 the Samba suite.</para>
183 <title>SEE ALSO</title>
184 <para><citerefentry><refentrytitle>smbpasswd</refentrytitle>
185 <manvolnum>8</manvolnum></citerefentry>, <citerefentry><refentrytitle>Samba</refentrytitle>
186 <manvolnum>7</manvolnum></citerefentry>, and
187 the Internet RFC1321 for details on the MD4 algorithm.
192 <title>AUTHOR</title>
194 <para>The original Samba software and related utilities
195 were created by Andrew Tridgell. Samba is now developed
196 by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar
197 to the way the Linux kernel is developed.</para>
199 <para>The original Samba man pages were written by Karl Auer.
200 The man page sources were converted to YODL format (another
201 excellent piece of Open Source software, available at <ulink noescape="1" url="ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/">
202 ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/</ulink>) and updated for the Samba 2.0
203 release by Jeremy Allison. The conversion to DocBook for
204 Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook XML 4.2
205 for Samba 3.0 was done by Alexander Bokovoy.</para>