Change root password

[biggdogg285]

I would like to change my servers root password every12 hours automatically via the crontab.
Any ideas on how to accomplish that?

Thank you!

 

[SysSachin]

You can change that with using " echo "USERNAME:NEWPASSWORD" | chpasswd " but can you please let me know why you want to change that with cron and every 12 hours ?

 

[24x7server]

Hi,

It is too risky to do it like this because you will have to pass the new password somewhere to view and doing this may be a bit risk in terms of security. You may end up losing the password too. However, if you want to do something security wise, I would suggest using an SSH key and disable the password authentication, so there will be no need to have the SSH password to be changed again and again.

 

[biggdogg285]

Thanks for your responses.

I just want to randomly change the root password so that nobody can access it via WHM.
We do use CSF for brute force attacks, but I would feel better if that root password wasn't stored anywhere.

SSH is already locked down to a different port and will not accept password authentication.
PermitRootLogin without-password
PasswordAuthentication no

Any idea how I can cleanly update the root password via the root cron?

 

[cPanelMichael]

Any idea how I can cleanly update the root password via the root cron?

Hello,

You can find discussion and examples on this topic at the following third-party URL:

Change Password every week for root user script

Thank you.