Running Dropbear Without Root Permissions

[Loganaden Velvindron]

There is a need for privilege separation here, similar to what OpenSSH is doing.


On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Nixon, Kent W <kwn2 at pitt.edu> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm currently testing my (default) compile settings of dropbear 2016.73 on an x86_64 Ubuntu 14.04 machine. I'm running the dropbear server from the terminal of a standard user account and attempting to connect using dbclient as that same user from the same machine just to test/learn how to use dropbear before I attempt to cross-compile it and run it on an Android system.
>
> I currently run the following command to start the server:
>
> dropbear -F -p 6666 -E -R -m
>
> And attempt to connect (using the same machine) as the same user that is running dropbear using:
>
> dbcleint -p 6666 -y <username>@127.0.0.1
>
> Everything seems to work well, except that after I enter the appropriate password, the client is rejected by the server which posts the message:
>
> User account '<username>' is locked
>
> However, following the same steps as above, but running the dropbear server with root permissions, everything works as expected (i.e. I am able to open a remote shell without any problems).
>
> What changes when dropbear is run with standard user permissions that is causing the account to be 'locked'? Do I need to locate the rsa/dss/ecdsa keys somewhere else other than /etc/dropbear/?
>
> Thanks in advance for your time and consideration!
>
> ~ Kent