Ken Thompson's Unix Password
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Ken Thompson's Unix Password
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Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#2> Did he really use uppercase letters or even special chars?
Why would he not? I'm obviously missing something here.
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#3> Did he really use uppercase letters or even special chars? Why would he not? I'm obviously missing something here.
In the early days of unix, people didn't take passwords that seriously and often shared them.
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#4> Did he really use uppercase letters or even special chars? Why would he not? I'm obviously missing something here.
In the early days of unix, people didn't take passwords that seriously and often shared them.
I would have borrowed "/.,/.," a long time ago had I heard about it sooner. That is just way too convenient.
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#5I'm shocked at how well the old hashing stood up; sure, it's totally crackable today, but a well-picked password still took 4+ days to crack on modern hardware, which is remarkable. (Granted, it doesn't sound like they did anything fancy like throwing a hundred cloud instances at it or something; I'm not saying you should use DES today:) )
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#6> Did he really use uppercase letters or even special chars? Why would he not? I'm obviously missing something here.
I guess, to enter the Unix password you need physical access to a machine. If they have access to a machine and can crack a lowercase password, a harder password will not necessarily save you. So at least you can make it easier for you to type.
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#7>Since the DES-based crypt(3) algorithm used for these hashes is well known to be weak (and limited to at most 8 letters)
>ZghOT0eRm4U9s:p/q2-q4!
How is that 8 letters?
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#8>Since the DES-based crypt(3) algorithm used for these hashes is well known to be weak (and limited to at most 8 letters) >ZghOT0eRm4U9s:p/q2-q4! How is that 8 letters?
The part before : is the hash, the part after is the cracked 8 character password.
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the early days of unix, people didn't take passwords that seriously and often shared them.
I would have borrowed "/.,/.," a long time ago had I heard about it sooner. That is just way too convenient.
My first password ever was qazwsx and I used it until I learned that it's included in "known" password text files and thus instantly crackable.
However, I wonder how safe it is to take an "easy" password like /.,/.,/., and then add a bunch of exclamation points to the end, so that it's both long and not part of a dictionary.
I'm sure password crackers are advanced enough to first try taking common passwords and then adding human modifications to make them more secure.
But something like MyDogRules###########! seems like it could be very secure, actually.
Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password
#10> Did he really use uppercase letters or even special chars? Why would he not? I'm obviously missing something here.
The early days of mainframes had some groups of individuals who advocated for no passwords or just your username again as a password: https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch07.html