*BSD News Article 81292


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From: John Lucas <jlucas@jnet.vi>
Subject: Re: Looking for better passwd program
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Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 12:11:04 GMT
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J Wunsch wrote:
> 
> John Lucas <jlucas@jnet.vi> wrote:
> 
> > Has anyone run across a port of any of the better "passwd" replacements
> > such as "npasswd" for FreeBSD 2.x? If so please point me to it.
> 
> What exactly do you expect from them?  (Sorry for my ignorance, i
> simply don't know npasswd.)
> 
> --
> cheers, J"org
> 
> joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
> Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)

The "npasswd" program did two things:

	1. allows the setting of password policies (length etc).
	2. disallowed "dumb" passwords

The second part used the same algorithms as the 1988 Internet WORM program
(checks against user data, dictionaries etc) to prevent this sort of attack from
succeeding (because no one is allowed a password that would be broken in this
manner).

There are other "smart" password programs, but the only one I ever used was
"npasswd" on SunOS.

One other thing I would like to see that the FreeBSD passwd program doesn't seem
to do is authentication logging (I would like to see who has or has not changed
their password).

-- 
| John Lucas                          jlucas@jnet.vi                 |
| Information Technology              NIC Handle: JL423              |
| University of the Virgin Islands    (809) 693-1216                 |
| St. Thomas, VI 00802                http://www.jnet.vi/jlucas.html |