ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Bruno Girin <brunogirin@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 19/03/13 13:31, Robert Bruce Park wrote:
> On 13-03-19 05:57 AM, Bruno Girin wrote:
> > On 19/03/13 10:01, Alberto Mardegan wrote:
> >> Yes. In fact, it's possible to make the two passwords go out of
> >> sync, and there you'll be prompted to enter your keyring master
> >> password as the first application requests a password.
>
> > OK so it's essential that whatever we do ensures that doesn't
> > happen. Users will have no idea what their "keyring master
> > password" is.
>
> Well, if you forget your user password, and you use root to override
> it, then that will necessarily cause them to go out of sync.
>
> Normally when changing your user password, it prompts for your old
> password, so that it can use it to decrypt the login keyring, so that
> it can be re-encrypted with the new password after.
>
> But if you are root, you don't have to enter the old password, thus
> the login keyring cannot be decrypted, thus it cannot be re-encrypted,
> thus the passwords become out of sync.
>
> I don't believe this is a solvable problem, so don't forget your login
> password ;-)

OK that makes sense. I was thinking of the everyday scenario when you
change your password.

Having said this, a password (or device) reset procedure would be good
to have (with all proper warnings) as going into recovery mode is not
easy on a mobile device. Obviously you don't want to make it too easy. I
was thinking you could make use of U1 to register the device and have
the device take the user through some form of authentication with U1
before allowing password reset. That could also allow you to disable a
device remotely when you lose it or get it stolen. But I may have
strayed off topic there :-)

Bruno