[X-Unix] ssh sudo password in clear text

[Paul Hess]

On Jun 10, 2007, at 7:06 PM, Eric F Crist wrote:

> On Jun 10, 2007, at 5:31 PMJun 10, 2007, Eric F Crist wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 10, 2007, at 4:50 PMJun 10, 2007, Paul Hess wrote:
>>>> echo "password" | ssh someserver.com sudo mailstuff/sa-learn.sh
>>>
>>> Hi Eric,
>>>
>>> Here's the rub that brings me back to square one (unless I  
>>> misunderstand the piping).
>>>
>>> If I use the command above, wouldn't the password be sent to  
>>> "ssh" rather than sent to the "sudo" command?  I think I somehow  
>>> need to put echo "password" into the command line after ssh to be  
>>> piped to sudo but I don't understand the syntax to do that.  I  
>>> believe it has to do with single quotes but I can't find a way to  
>>> get it right.
>>
>> Paul,
>>
>> The echo "password"  portion of the command gets piped into the  
>> entirety of ssh someserver.com sudo mailstuff/sa-learn.sh.  In  
>> this case, the sudo ... is what reads that input from stdin.
>>
>> To help you understand:
>>
>> foo | bar
>>
>
> Paul,
>
> Something I left out is that in the above example, bar is your ssh  
> command, inclusive of the sudo... stuff.  ssh does you a favor by  
> executing that command for you and exiting.  So, you have the right  
> idea that the echo command is being pipe into ssh and not sudo.  In  
> this particular case, however, sudo is the command that ends up  
> with the piped data (ssh passes it on).
>
> HTH
> -----
> Eric F Crist
> Secure Computing Networks

Thanks for all the help Eric!  I'll give these a try and let you know.

                                  - Paul