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Ken Thompson's Unix Password

leahneukirchen.org

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Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#591

Post by philpem »

nvarsj wrote: post #578
jonny383 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got kicked out of school when I was fifteen for doing this. My class was the first year to have a mandatory laptop program. Each laptop was running Windows XP on the schools AD domain. I booted up OPH-crack at home, and didn't get a result. So then I torrented a larger rainbow table and ran it again for three days. Boom, there I had it. My motivation for this was wanting to install my own software on the laptop tha…

Wow - this is awful. For simply getting admin rights on your own laptop? How do school admins get away with treating the kids like inmates? Good on your dad, he handled it well.

You don't get to be headmaster of a school without wanting to feel power over the kids.

And if that's the only power you have in your life, you'll protect it viciously.

Teachers are usually in it for the warm fuzzy feeling of doing something good, but I've never met a headmaster who didn't behave like I described above.

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#592

Post by newscracker »

sys_64738 wrote: post #532
AgentME wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why some versions of Windows required you to press ctrl-alt-delete to open the login form. Programs aren't allowed to block Windows from receiving ctrl-alt-delete, so a fake login program would not be able to stay on the screen after the user pressed ctrl-alt-delete. (Of course this only works if the user knows to always hit ctrl-alt-delete when they go to login. If the user sees an already-open (fake…

I think ctrl-alt-delete generates a hardware interrupt.

It is not a hardware interrupt in the sense that there's nothing special about this key combination to generate a specific interrupt. The only related interrupts are the keyboard interrupts that happen for every keyboard activity, which the BIOS interprets and takes actions like turning on a key LED and storing the actions in a memory buffer (this is all in "real mode" on x86 processors) before that goes further up to the application. Capturing the keyboard interrupt could allow one to intercept specific keystrokes (like Ctrl+Alt+Del) before the OS gets it, but that's not possible in the OSes the most people use today (which all run in "protected mode").

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#593

Post by grenoire »

boomlinde wrote: post #568
anaphor wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of them will use an algorithm similar to this one https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html

Great read! Just noting that the website redirects you to an obscene (but funny) image if this site is the Referer. Disable Referer before clicking or copy the link into the toolbar manually.

Somebody got very salty at the brogrammers over here...

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#594

Post by agent008t »

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…

There is something very wrong with the school (system) if you actually got expelled for that. If that is the whole story, they should have explained why it was wrong and tried to encourage you to learn more, responsibly, by actually asking you to help them with securing their system. That is roughly what my headmaster in Russia did in similar circumstances. The thought of expelling a kid over something silly like this wouldn't even cross anyone's mind.

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#595

Post by ikurei »

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…

Can't help but wonder, didn't you think about reporting this, anonimously at least?

If you figured this out, it wasn't all that unlikely that a less scrupulous hacker could have.

(Not judging, both because I don't like to and because you were a kid.)

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#596

Post by pjc50 »

tandav wrote: post #333
alpb wrote: post #15

Ken Thompson: > congrats. https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAG=a+rj8VcXjS-ftaj8P2_duLFSUpmN...

Offtopic. Many teams use mailing lists. That UX always scared me. Is anybody know good tutorials on how to getting started to use this kind of interfaces?

The interface is email. You know how to use your email client, right?

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#597

Post by socceroos »

jakobegger wrote: post #581
waway wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, that's very scummy. That must feel worse than them finding you because you slipped up technically.

I think that if someone boasts that they've cracked everyones password, reporting them is the right thing to do.

Perhaps the discretionary thing to do in the case where the perpetrator is relatively whitehat is to mention to IT that "it appears common knowledge that all admin passwords are compromised" without exposing their identity.

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#598

Post by jwr »

tandav wrote: post #333
alpb wrote: post #15

Ken Thompson: > congrats. https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAG=a+rj8VcXjS-ftaj8P2_duLFSUpmN...

Offtopic. Many teams use mailing lists. That UX always scared me. Is anybody know good tutorials on how to getting started to use this kind of interfaces?

As an internet old-timer, I initially thought this was a joke, but then realized that it's entirely reasonable for a whole "generation" of internet users to grow up without using mailing lists, and that indeed they may seem scary at first!

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#599

Post by dunmalg »

jakobegger wrote: post #584
JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this more like duplicating everyones house key? He never actually went into the houses.

If someone secretly stole my key and made a copy of it, I hope the court would send them to jail, regardless of why they made the copy.

No, it's generally not illegal to copy someones key. It's illegal to STEAL the key, of course, but copy? Not a crime. Some states have laws that prohibit "providing access" to a government facility which can be applied to copying government keys, but your house key? Nope.

SOURCE: am locksmith

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#600

Post by rwmj »

Kiro wrote: post #579
rwmj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typing on a teletype is painful at the best of times. One reason why common Unix commands are so short. Edit: Yes I have used a teletype, connected to an Elliott computer, I believe it was a 903 or at least it looked very much like this: http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/32480/Elliott-903

Stupid question but how do you actually type on that thing? I don't see anything resembling a keyboard.

There was a room full of teletypes connected over serial ports. They aren't shown in the photo. I can't find a picture resembling any of the teletypes that we had, but the general idea is shown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleprinter#/media/File:Telesc... (The ones we actually had were a bit smaller and flatter)
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