Re: Hiding password from ps - Need better solution

From: Ken Hill <khill0_at_sct.edu>
Date: 1996/04/10
Message-ID: <4kglb5$q63_at_news-read-1.PeachNet.EDU>#1/1

In article <4k7ftq$6c9_at_gaia.cc.gatech.edu>, badri_at_cc.gatech.edu (badri) wrote:
>Hi:
>
> We have an ORACLE 7.2 database on Dynix/ptx 4.1.2. I wanted
>to hide the username and password from "ps" command.

        Badri, This is the header directly from hide.c: ***

DESCRIPTION                                                             
    Hides arguments for programs on UNIX systems.                        
    Can be used as a program prefix: hide program arguments              
    or as a symbolic link.  If this program is not invoked as hide, it   
    will hide its arguments and invoke the program name.hide             
    The best way to use this is to rename your critical programs to      
    program.hide, and create a symbolic link program to hide.            


>>> mv sqlplus sqlplus.hide; ln -s hide sqlplus <<<                         

    Thus when sqlplus is invoked, its arguments will be hidden           
 NOTES                                                                   
    This program works by padding 3000 '/' chars in argv[0].  This fools 
    all known ps's.  This will reduce the argument capacity of your      

    program by 3000 chars. A good enhancement would be to reduce the     padding if needed so that no arguments are lost - would require a

    method of determining the max argument size on the system.  Some     
    system's provide the E2BIG error on exec.                            

    There is some performace penalty for using this program, but it is     minimal because this program is so small - the biggest cost is the     extra exec required to get this program started. ***

	I use it exactly as quoted and it works just.  Make sure everything is 
	linked correctly, but all you can see from the ps -ef is 'sqlplus',
	no 'login/password'....

	Ken 

Received on Wed Apr 10 1996 - 00:00:00 CEST