Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 22:02:17 -0500 (EST) From: Derek Flowers <djflow@portwwwbus.tc.cc.va.us> To: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Password Characters Not Required??? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980319220149.3185C-100000@portwwwbus.tc.cc.va.us>
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The MD5 algorithm includes a salt with the password. Doesn't this have something to do with the password lengths? I'm not positive but it makes sense. ---------------------------------------- Derek Flowers djflow@erols.com http://portwwwbus.tc.cc.va.us/~djflow "640K ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill Gates, circa 1981 On Fri, 20 Mar 1998, John Saunders wrote: > Sue Blake wrote: > > I don't understand this stuff, but I did a braindead-newbie installation of > > 2.2.2 and I use long passwords because I never heard there was a limit of 8. > > The long passwords are very real on my system. > > > > My 43 character password doesn't work if I leave characters off the end. > > My 89 character password doesn't work if I omit or change the last > > character. > > Hmm, I suspect you didn't install the DES security stuff (the bit that > warns you about not installing if you are not a US resident). DES is a > compatible algorithm that only takes 8 significant characters from the > password. If you use DES you can copy /etc/passwd entries from one Unix > OS to another and expect them to work. The default is to use MD5 which > only allows the encrypted passwords to work with FreeBSD (or maybe a > small number of others). I strongly suspect (but don't know for sure) > that the MD5 code uses all the letters you supply or a very large > number of them. > > Cheers. > -- +------------------------------------------------------------+ > . | John Saunders mailto:John.Saunders@scitec.com.au (Work) | > ,--_|\ | mailto:john@nlc.net.au (Home) | > / Oz \ | http://www.nlc.net.au/~john/ | > \_,--\_/ | SCITEC LIMITED Phone +61 2 9428 9563 Fax +61 2 9428 9933 | > v | "By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends." | > +------------------------------------------------------------+ > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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