[Samba] Proposal to change security=share in Samba 4.0

[John H Terpstra]

On 02/27/2012 04:58 AM, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> I recently proposed on samba-technical that for Samba 4.0, that we
> change security=share to have the following semantics:
> 
>  - All connections are made as the guest user
>  - No passwords are required, and no other accounts are available.
> 
> Naturally, full user-name/password authentication remain available in
> security=user and above.
> 
> The rationale is that we need a very simple way to run a 'trust the
> network' Samba server, where users mark shares as guest ok.  I want to
> keep these simple configurations working.
> 
> At the same time, I want to close the door on one of the most arcane
> areas of Samba authentication.  The problem comes from the fact that
> Samba never implemented security=share properly:  instead of having one
> password per share, we tried to guess the username, and match that to a
> username/password pair. 
> 
> Not only is this code complex, it begins to fail with modern clients and
> modern security settings.  For example, NTLMv2 relies on the username
> and workgroup, but clients which send NTLMv2 do not send these in the
> 'tree connect' request that contains the password.  Instead, we must
> remember the previous unchecked 'session setup', and apply the password
> from there.  If we instead guess the username, then NTLMv2 will not
> work.
> 
> Finally, Samba clients only send LM passwords to security=share servers.
> LM passwords are very insecure, and are now off by default.  As such,
> Samba clients will not connect to any server running security=share by
> default.
> 
> If you use security=share, and feel that your particular configuration
> cannot be handled any other way, please let me know, so we can find the
> best to handle your particular requirements. 
> 
> Thanks, 
> 
> Andrew Bartlett

Is there any reason we can not do away with "security = share" and get
rid of this altogether?  Was there not a prior proposal to deprecate
this back in the early days of 3.0.x?

- John T.