Pluggable Authentication Module
<security> (PAM) The new industry standard integrated
login framework.
PAM is used by system entry components, such as the
Common Desktop Environment's dtlogin, to authenticate users logging into a
Unix system.
It provides pluggability for a variety of system-entry services.
PAM's ability to
stack authentication modules can be used to integrate
login with different authentication mechanisms such as
RSA,
DCE and
Kerberos, and thus unify login mechanisms. PAM can also integrate
smart card authentication.
White paper (http://www.gr.osf.org/book/psm-wppr.htm).
[OSF-RFC 86.0 V. Samar, R. Schemers, "Unified Login with Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM)", Oct 1995].
