question about getpass

[pdl at root44.UUCP]

I don't understand. Why should one want /dev/tty to be unopenable?
The whole point of getpass is to read a password from the terminal,
so that peaople can't do tricks with it (e.g. piping millions of passwords
in to see which one's right).
If, on the other hand, you meant `how can /dev/tty ever not be readable?'
the answer is because of `administrative error'.