From owner-freebsd-stable Thu Mar 19 15:39:52 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA00152 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Thu, 19 Mar 1998 15:39:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from fledge.watson.org (root@FLEDGE.RES.CMU.EDU [128.2.91.116]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA29889; Thu, 19 Mar 1998 15:39:11 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from robert@cyrus.watson.org) Received: from trojanhorse.pr.watson.org (trojanhorse.pr.watson.org [192.0.2.10]) by fledge.watson.org (8.8.8/8.6.10) with SMTP id SAA24515; Thu, 19 Mar 1998 18:38:43 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 18:37:24 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@trojanhorse.pr.watson.org Reply-To: Robert Watson To: Tom cc: Richard Stanaford , "Randy A. Katz" , questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Password Characters Not Required??? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Tom wrote: > > > Indeed it is normal. FreeBSD takes only the first 8 significant > > > characters and then truncates the rest. This is not FreeBSD specific. > > > BSDI is the same way, along with Solaris and other flavors of Unix, I > > > believe. > > > > However, BSD/OS allows you to modify the max password length for > > userclasses, up to 128 characters I think? Similarly, the password > > This is for user entry purposes. FreeBSD has it to. It has nothing to > do with how many password characters might be significant. Actually, I believe it does actually reflect significant characters. On a BSD/OS 3.1 machine, we have the max password length turned way up, and shorter passwords (but above 16 char, say) just don't cut it. These really are significant characters :). >From BSD/OS login.conf(0): widepasswords bool false Use the new wide password format when using the passwd(1) utility. The wide password format al- lows up to 128 signifi- cant characters in the password. Sounds fun to me. Definitely not good in a mixed-OS passwd environment, but good for plain BSD machines. :) > > behavior here is a function of the crypt() used -- with Kerberos, you get > > whatever the Kerberos behavior is -- it certainly has more significant > > characters, however. I would personally like to see change in behavior > > here, perhaps as a login.conf option similar to BSD/OS. I don't see one > > in the -stable login.conf man page, however. > > md5 also has more significant characters (16 I believe). In many ways, > the "secure" (DES) distribution is actually less secure than the default > md5. Yes, it is 16 characters. Robert N Watson Carnegie Mellon University http://www.cmu.edu/ SafePort Network Services http://www.safeport.com/ robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message