On 2008-11-05, Jon Elson wrote:
Maxwell Lol wrote:
Leon Fisk writes:
On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:37:59 -0600, Jon Elson
wrote:
snip
I also made the password even harder to guess, essentially gibberish!
snip
The best, hardest to crack, easy to remember passwords are
simply long phrases. Like:
"my favorite car was a 1973 chevy elcamino"
Unless the system merely uses the first 7 or 8 characters, and truncates the rest.
You can be VERY sure that Linux uses ALL the
characters.
That depends on which encryption (actually hashing) technique it
uses. The original one uses only the first eight characters, and stores
the hash as a 13-character long string. (Look at /etc/passwd,
/etc/shadow, or wherever your version of linux stores the hashed
password. Look at the second ':'-delimited field and count the
characters).
The equivalent in OpenBSD is 60 characters long, using the
blowfish hashing algorithm.
There are several other hashing algorithms used by various
flavors of unix, but I think that all of them will accept and use the
old hash algorithm if it finds a matching string in the master password
file.
With ssh logins, there are encryption
keys that are 1024 characters long, thank God they
don't make you type these in.
Those are keys -- not passwords -- though if you set up sshd to
accept such connections in lieu of the password, it can serve in place
of a password. But mostly, that ssh encryption assures that no password
goes between systems in the clear, so you can't snoop on it if you have
access to the local net.
Of course, by
making them so long they HAVE to be stored on some
computer, that compromises their security.
Two strings -- which have to interact to assure both ends that
the system connecting is really the one which you want to have
connecting, and that the one which you are trying to connect to is
really the one which you think you are connecting to.
Enjoy,
DoN.
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