Ken Thompson's Unix Password

Post by whalesalad » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

lordlic wrote: post #429

whalesalad wrote: post #400

I remember cracking the password from a Windows system in high school. There was a centralized login mechanism using Novell but everything was cached locally. So you could boot a Linux CD and copy the password file to a memory stick, and crack at home. I think I used lophtcrack? The head admin account for the entire school district (basically root) had the password “north”. It took like a fraction of a second to crac…

I was expelled from university for pulling off the exact same exploit with the "workstation only" feature in Novell. In my case, they put a computer in every dorm room, and every single one of them had a domain-wide administrator account cached in its SAM file. It was inevitable that a student would find it. It's been almost 15 years now but I believe the password was rac3c4r or something trivial like that. I ran Oph…

Post by ben509 » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #223

bakul wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A proper policy would’ve been to not have any human look at a user’s password and just email them a warning about their weak password. A password should be considered a PPI (personal, private information) and off limits to others, no matter how creepy (exception being a legal warrant). These days you might gotten in trouble!

Agreed. That's why if I were doing it today, I would just shut off the account after the second warning. Although I don't think it's PII if it's all internal company data, especially if it is known that IT will crack your password.

Post by blackflame » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

passivepinetree wrote: post #402

whalesalad wrote: post #400

I remember cracking the password from a Windows system in high school. There was a centralized login mechanism using Novell but everything was cached locally. So you could boot a Linux CD and copy the password file to a memory stick, and crack at home. I think I used lophtcrack? The head admin account for the entire school district (basically root) had the password “north”. It took like a fraction of a second to crac…

That's fascinating. Would you mind sharing the full story?

Post by trustissue » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 10:53 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #382

grawprog wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I discovered that's the way my banking app actually worked until only a few updates ago. The password was originally limited to 8 characters (why this was the case for an online bank password is beyond me) but the app would allow you to enter more characters into the password input. It only accepted the first 8 characters though so anything you entered after those was ignored. I discoveres this when I mistyped my pas…

I’ve had the goddamn Citibank _require_ that I use a password 6 or 7 characters long on one of their systems. This year (2019).

Post by bakul » Wed, Oct 09, 2019, 10:58 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #443

bakul wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The /etc/passwd file from which this password was unearthed has a date of Jan 5 1980 (from a 3BSD tar file). Presumably ken has updated his password since then.

One would hope, but it still seems like common courtesy to give him a heads up.