John Summerfield wrote:
There is quite a deal of well-reasoned debate about what constitutes
a
good password.
"bismcoles" would probably be easy for Bill Smith to
remember, and would
certainly defy any dictionary attack. As would "bluewatermelon."
Both of these could be part of a dictionary attack. Consider most
straight plain text to be part of a dictionary attack.
The expect package has a password generator that creates passwords
like
this, but again they're hard to remember: "et3tUfGd."
A better example is Blu3w4terme7on, easier to remember but you need
to come up with some kind of rules for remembering it. For myself, I
prefer passphrases. I find them easier to remember, such as
mUst4rd&Tuna_F1sh. A silly example but I've used sillier. Sometimes
funnier works well (easy to remember).
A reasonable security system would shut down the login process for a
time after some number of consecutive failed login attempts. It's a rule
that's been around for a long time, it's even in Linux, but implemented
poorly.
I've used pam_abl and it works quite well, it's 3 strikes (adjustable)
and you're locked. It can automatically unlock after a setting of time
and has additional features which make it pretty flexible.
--
Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry(a)linuxha.com
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