PAM Authentication for a Legacy Application

Question

I have a legacy app that receives a username/password request asynchronously over the wire. Since I already have the username and password stored as variables, what would be the best way to authenticate with PAM on Linux (Debian 6)?

I've tried writing my own conversation function, but I'm not sure of the best way of getting the password into it. I've considered storing it in appdata and referencing that from the pam_conv struct, but there's almost no documentation on how to do that.

Is there a simpler way to authenticate users without the overkill of a conversation function? I'm unable to use pam_set_data successfully either, and I'm not sure that's even appropriate.

Here's what I'm doing:

user = guiMessage->username;
pass = guiMessage->password;

pam_handle_t* pamh = NULL;
int           pam_ret;
struct pam_conv conv = {
  my_conv,
  NULL
};

pam_start("nxs_login", user, &conv, &pamh);
pam_ret = pam_authenticate(pamh, 0);

if (pam_ret == PAM_SUCCESS)
  permissions = 0xff;

pam_end(pamh, pam_ret);

And initial attempts at the conversation function resulted in (password is hard-coded for testing):

int 
my_conv(int num_msg, const struct pam_message **msg, struct pam_response **resp, void *data)
{
  struct pam_response *aresp;

  if (num_msg <= 0 || num_msg > PAM_MAX_NUM_MSG)
    return (PAM_CONV_ERR);
  if ((aresp = (pam_response*)calloc(num_msg, sizeof *aresp)) == NULL)
    return (PAM_BUF_ERR);
  aresp[0].resp_retcode = 0;
  aresp[0].resp = strdup("mypassword");

  *resp = aresp;
  return (PAM_SUCCESS);
}

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

This is what I ended up doing. See the comment marked with three asterisks.

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <security/pam_appl.h>
#include <unistd.h>

// To build this:
// g++ test.cpp -lpam -o test

// if pam header files missing try:
// sudo apt install libpam0g-dev

struct pam_response *reply;

//function used to get user input
int function_conversation(int num_msg, const struct pam_message **msg, struct pam_response **resp, void *appdata_ptr)
{
  *resp = reply;
  return PAM_SUCCESS;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
  if(argc != 2) {
      fprintf(stderr, "Usage: check_user <username>\n");
      exit(1);
  }
  const char *username;
  username = argv[1];

  const struct pam_conv local_conversation = { function_conversation, NULL };
  pam_handle_t *local_auth_handle = NULL; // this gets set by pam_start

  int retval;

  // local_auth_handle gets set based on the service
  retval = pam_start("common-auth", username, &local_conversation, &local_auth_handle);

  if (retval != PAM_SUCCESS)
  {
    std::cout << "pam_start returned " << retval << std::endl;
    exit(retval);
  }

  reply = (struct pam_response *)malloc(sizeof(struct pam_response));

  // *** Get the password by any method, or maybe it was passed into this function.
  reply[0].resp = getpass("Password: ");
  reply[0].resp_retcode = 0;

  retval = pam_authenticate(local_auth_handle, 0);

  if (retval != PAM_SUCCESS)
  {
    if (retval == PAM_AUTH_ERR)
    {
      std::cout << "Authentication failure." << std::endl;
    }
    else
    {
      std::cout << "pam_authenticate returned " << retval << std::endl;
    }
    exit(retval);
  }

  std::cout << "Authenticated." << std::endl;

  retval = pam_end(local_auth_handle, retval);

  if (retval != PAM_SUCCESS)
  {
    std::cout << "pam_end returned " << retval << std::endl;
    exit(retval);
  }

  return retval;
}

Answer 2

struct pam_conv {
    int (*conv)(int num_msg, const struct pam_message **msg,
                struct pam_response **resp, void *appdata_ptr);
    void *appdata_ptr;
};

The second field(appdata_ptr) of the struct pam_conv is passed to the conversation function, therefore we can use it as our password pointer.

     static int convCallback(int num_msg, const struct pam_message** msg,
                             struct pam_response** resp, void* appdata_ptr)
     {
            struct pam_response* aresp;
        
            if (num_msg <= 0 || num_msg > PAM_MAX_NUM_MSG)
                return (PAM_CONV_ERR);
            if ((aresp = (pam_response*)calloc(num_msg, sizeof * aresp)) == NULL)
                return (PAM_BUF_ERR);
            aresp[0].resp_retcode = 0;
            aresp[0].resp = strdup((char*)appdata_ptr);
                                                    
            *resp = aresp;
            
            return (PAM_SUCCESS);
    }

    int main()
    {
        ....
        pam_handle_t* pamH = 0;
        char *password = strdup("foopassword");
        struct pam_conv conversation = {convCallback, password};
        int retvalPam = pam_start("check_user", "foousername", &conversation, &pamH);
        
        //Call pam_authenticate(pamH, 0)
        //Call pam_end(pamH, 0);
        ...
        ...
        free(password);
    }