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Linux check passwords against a dictionary attack

Posted by nixcraft on · 1 comment
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A dictionary attack is a technique for defeating a cipher or authentication mechanism by trying to determine its decryption key or passphrase by searching a large number of possibilities. You can be configured to verify that passwords cannot be guessed easily using Linux PAM module called pam_cracklib.so. This article describes this configuration.

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Comments (1)

swbrown ·
apt-get install john in Debian will set up John the Ripper, a popular password cracking tool, to run for a while each night trying to crack the passwords on the system. This allows for a more in-depth brutalization of passwords used on the system at the expense of CPU time if it's important enough.

Note that it's likely it won't come with Etch due to the maintainer having been asleep on the job, but you can pull it from Sid.

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