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Ken Thompson's Unix Password

leahneukirchen.org

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Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#31
post #26
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part before : is the hash, the part after is the cracked 8 character password.

still 13 characters... edit: LOL, I guess I'm a little dumb today

"p/q2-q4!" is the password, "ZghOT0eRm4U9s" is the password's hash. "p/q2-q4!" is 8 characters.

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the beginning of the closed game, which is what the article says. Seems like a vacuous nitpick.

Uh, okay, technically true, touché. But it's "the beginning" of roughly 50% of all chess games ever played. It seems very strange to call out one particular line it _might_ end up being the beginning of. It's also "the beginning" of game 2 of the 1929 Bogoljubov-Alekhine world championship match, among millions of others, after all.

Using one potential endpoint as the point of reference to anchor to is a classically human thing to do. It doesn’t particularly matter that they chose Closed or Bogol-Alek. It just matters that they conveyed their thought to others with enough accuracy to get the point across.

Asking the question “why did they think of Closed first and not, for example, Bogol-Alek?” is to ask why someone sees a porcupine in a Rorschach blot. Everyone’s mind has different memory anchors, and they are not produced reliably or with regard for logic and reason.

It still worked, though :)

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#39
post #6
post #2

> 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.

In fact, the system where the password originates from (3BSD) was released in 1979 and had commands like net(1) for "execute a command on a remote machine" - given a password was provided. Since quite the early days Unix has been designated as a multi-user time-sharing OS for large expensive computers.

Re: Ken Thompson's Unix Password

#40
i deduced my dad's password when I was a middle-schooler. The uni micro had a teletype and although it did not echo password characters, if you mistyped your password, it would print the mistyped password, and knowing a bit about my dad, I could figure out what the correct password was. I logged in and sent himself an email reminding him to use a better password.
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