Why use strong passwords? Post: 302726777

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Special Forums Cybersecurity Why use strong passwords? Post 302726777 by Neo on Monday 5th of November 2012 07:34:45 AM

11-05-2012

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One reason is that if someone steals the password file with all the encrypted passwords, it is easy to crack weak passwords. So, imagine a business with 20,000 customers and someone steals the password file. It would be easy for a criminal to run a brute force exploit (attack) against the encrypted passwords in the password file, and then subsequently compromise the accounts.

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newusers

NEWUSERS(8)						      System Manager's Manual						       NEWUSERS(8)

NAME

       newusers - update and create new users in batch

SYNOPSIS

       newusers [new_users]

DESCRIPTION

       newusers  reads a file of user name and cleartext password pairs and uses this information to update a group of existing users or to create
       new users.  Each line is in the same format as the standard password file (see passwd(5)) with the following exceptions.

       pw_passwd This field will be encrypted and used as the new value of the encrypted password.

       pw_age	 This field will be ignored for shadow passwords if the user already exists.

       pw_gid	 This field may be the name of an existing group, in which case the named user will be added  as  a  member.   If  a  non-existent
		 numerical group is given, a new group will be created having this number.

       pw_dir	 This  field  will  be	checked for existence as a directory and a new directory with the same name will be created if it does not
		 already exist.  The ownership of the directory will be set to be that of the user being created or updated.

       This command is intended to be used in a large system environment where many accounts are updated at a single time.

CAVEATS

       The input file must be protected since it contains unencrypted passwords.

SEE ALSO

       passwd(1), useradd(8)

AUTHOR

       Julianne Frances Haugh (jockgrrl@ix.netcom.com)

																       NEWUSERS(8)