If you're using solaris, with a shadow file for passwords with encryption set to one of the encrytion standards that are supported, john the ripper will crack the password in the shadow file. Not sure what robsonde is talking about ... I've used it a million times to check users passwords.
robsonde has it right. If something is encrypted there must be a way to decrypt it. The algorithm used by unix for passwords is a one-way hash that cannot be reversed. JtR works by trying all possible passwords until it finds one that happens to result in the same hashed value. That is not what is meant by decryption. I will say the JtR is very clever at guessing weak passwords though.
We are required to used strong passwords here at work. To verify compliance I have been asked to run JtR. So far:
After 20 days, 17 hours, 21 minutes, and 23 seconds, JtR has guessed one password. Note that the author of JtR chose the verb "guess", not "crack", not "decrypt" or anything like that. It may take decades to guess all of the remaining 186 passwords. And I downloaded dozens of carefully chosen dictionaries to help JtR out, which is the only reason that JtR even has one guess so far.
I've forgotten root password on one of Solaris machines, i searched in forumes to find a similar case but there's no proceudre here to reinintialize root password, cause most of related commands & even single user mode needs root password that i don't have.
Any solution would be helpful.
--rgrds,... (9 Replies)
Hello ...
I lost my password root !
maybe someone can to help me to log in HP_UX,
i started the server in " Singel - User" and i changed my
password to new password and it`s not working ..
what i must to do ??? (4 Replies)
I have recently become the sys adm guy for our unix systems here for my shop. I have a pretty good understanding of the system, but there is just some stuff that I don't know. Right now one of those things is to recover the password for a unix system.
I know that there is a way that you can use... (2 Replies)
I'm attempting to blank out the root user password on a machine that we have forgotten the password for. I have been using the advice posted on this site to boot from CDROM in single user mode, then mounting the root slice and editing the /etc/shadow file. Each time I save the shadow file and... (1 Reply)
This is a common question im sure... I bought a RS/6000 Model 240. Aix 4.3.3 loaded. No root password was supplied to me, but I do have the install media (4 disks). I want to drop into maint mode. So I place the cd into the drive, restart the box ( by pressing the power button, since i do not have... (3 Replies)
Hi,
I would like to login from a Sun server running ssh:
Sun_SSH_1.1, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090704f
to
ssh: SSH Secure Shell 3.0.1 on sparc-sun-solaris2.6
How can I achieve this?
Thanks a million in advance (1 Reply)
Hi:
I bougth an used Sun Fire v440, and It have a firmware password. When I turn on the server, it ask for firmware password. (I don 't know what is the correct password). I can access to SC, but when I want to access to OBP, Firmware Password appears again. I remove the battery for two hours,... (1 Reply)
Hi Everybody,
I am trying to write a script (ksh) to connect to oracle db via sqlplus.
As I do not want the password to be in plain text, I've tried to use java to encrypt and decrypt it but I am not sure how can I pass the decrypted password to the script. Pls advise.
Below is what I would... (1 Reply)
Failed to recover lost root password for Solaris SunSparc
(On Sun Ultra10 - SPARC CPU Hardware, not x86 Intel CPU nor x64 AMD CPU)
This Sun Ultra10 workstation comes with an old 6-in wafer probing station purchased from a Surplus equipment vendor.
Computer: Sun Ultra 5/10 UPA/PCI... (21 Replies)
Discussion started by: fromtexas0
21 Replies
LEARN ABOUT SUSE
passwd
PASSWD(5) Linux Programmer's Manual PASSWD(5)NAME
passwd - password file
DESCRIPTION
Passwd is a text file, that contains a list of the system's accounts, giving for each account some useful information like user ID, group
ID, home directory, shell, etc. Often, it also contains the encrypted passwords for each account. It should have general read permission
(many utilities, like ls(1) use it to map user IDs to usernames), but write access only for the superuser.
In the good old days there was no great problem with this general read permission. Everybody could read the encrypted passwords, but the
hardware was too slow to crack a well-chosen password, and moreover, the basic assumption used to be that of a friendly user-community.
These days many people run some version of the shadow password suite, where /etc/passwd has asterisks (*) instead of encrypted passwords,
and the encrypted passwords are in /etc/shadow which is readable by the superuser only.
Regardless of whether shadow passwords are used, many sysadmins use an asterisk in the encrypted password field to make sure that this user
can not authenticate him- or herself using a password. (But see the Notes below.)
If you create a new login, first put an asterisk in the password field, then use passwd(1) to set it.
There is one entry per line, and each line has the format:
account:password:UID:GID:GECOS:directory:shell
The field descriptions are:
account the name of the user on the system. It should not contain capital letters.
password the encrypted user password, an asterisk (*), or the letter 'x'. (See pwconv(8) for an explanation of 'x'.)
UID the numerical user ID.
GID the numerical primary group ID for this user.
GECOS This field is optional and only used for informational purposes. Usually, it contains the full username. GECOS means
General Electric Comprehensive Operating System, which has been renamed to GCOS when GE's large systems division was sold
to Honeywell. Dennis Ritchie has reported: "Sometimes we sent printer output or batch jobs to the GCOS machine. The gcos
field in the password file was a place to stash the information for the $IDENTcard. Not elegant."
directory the user's $HOME directory.
shell the program to run at login (if empty, use /bin/sh). If set to a nonexistent executable, the user will be unable to login
through login(1).
FILES
/etc/passwd
NOTES
If you want to create user groups, their GIDs must be equal and there must be an entry in /etc/group, or no group will exist.
If the encrypted password is set to an asterisk, the user will be unable to login using login(1), but may still login using rlogin(1), run
existing processes and initiate new ones through rsh(1), cron(8), at(1), or mail filters, etc. Trying to lock an account by simply chang-
ing the shell field yields the same result and additionally allows the use of su(1).
SEE ALSO login(1), passwd(1), su(1), getpwent(3), getpwnam(3), group(5), shadow(5)COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.25 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
Linux 1998-01-05 PASSWD(5)