How do I hide login information passed to command line programs from appearing in the process list?

Question

I have to execute a program that passes in as command line options the username and password. Is there a way to hide the username & password from appearing in the /proc entry for this process.

Closely related question, "Hide processes from other users based on groups under Linux". (NetBSD supports this, too, via security.models.bsd44.curtain=1) Of course these things only hide the command line from other non-privileged users, you and root still see it. — sr_, Mar 15 '12 at 08:08
I am satisfied as long as non-privileged users cannot see it. — Bon Ami, Mar 15 '12 at 08:17
Possible duplicate: "How to make a process invisible to other users?" and these links. — sr_, Mar 15 '12 at 08:34
The coming 3.3 kernel can hide processes between users. See my answer here — jofel, Mar 15 '12 at 10:14

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 15 '12 at 09:45

If you you wrote the application or have access to the source code, you can modify it to not show that information in proc.

In C, the parameters passed to a program are communicated as a pointer to a character array (a pointer to a pointer to the characters). This array is modifiable by the application, and any modifications you make are reflected in the /proc/ entry. This includes the 0th element, which is the executable's filename.

Other languages have similar equivalents. Just modify the argument list through whichever mechanism the language implements.

How do I hide login information passed to command line programs from appearing in the process list?

1 Answers1