Guest account is present and enabled; and not in the user database

[Jeffrey Walton]

On a fresh install of Mint Linux, a Guest account is present and enabled. Worse, the account is not present in the standard user database so its not possible to disable/delete through standard tools such as User Accounts applet, usermod, and userdel. Additionally, because the account is "hidden", it cannot be disabled manually via /etc/password or /etc/shadow.

Adding accounts surrepticiously through a window manager is questionable at best.

$ uname -a
Linux mint-12-x64 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:56:25 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Jeffrey Walton (noloader)]

The Guest account does not show up in a search either:

# grep -H -r "Guest" /etc 2>/dev/null
Binary file /etc/alternatives/smbstatus matches
Binary file /etc/alternatives/nmblookup matches
Binary file /etc/alternatives/net matches
Binary file /etc/alternatives/testparm matches /etc/X11/Xsession.d/98vboxadd-xclient:# Start the Guest Additions X11 Client

If the Guest account is going to be hidden in an irrelevant configuration file, perhaps a comment with the name "Guest" should be place in /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf so folks trying to hunt it down can find it:

# Uncomment to disable the Guest (guest) account
# allow-guest=false

Even better, disable it by default:

# Uncomment to disable the Guest (guest) account
allow-guest=false

[Jeffrey Walton (noloader)]

Guest account wandering through user home directories (stock install).

[Jeffrey Walton (noloader)]

And the Guest account - which is present and enabled by default - is not sandboxed. So this bastard account is able to wander through other user home directories.

Also see https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/967935.