[CrackMonkey] OT

[Bob Bernstein]

The following, from me, has languished on comp.security.unix since late
Thursday night:

--- snip ---

Subject: password generators
Newsgroups: comp.security.unix
Organization: loggerheads with himself
User-Agent: tin/pre-1.4-19990216 ("Styrofoam") (UNIX) (OpenBSD/2.7 (i386))
NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2000 22:05:48 PDT

A quick tour via google of password generators for unix(en) systems turns
up...not much: there's Don Libes' 'mkpasswd' expect script, and Tommy Van
Vleck's 'gpw'.

On the other hand, writing password generators for Win/NT/etc systems seems
to be a thriving business, with all sorts of shareware candidates vying for
attention.

How might this disparity be explained?

--- snip ---

I conclude that the advent of MD5 and blowfish passwords has rendered the
whole idea of a password generator moot (since a 127 character password is
in effect a pass phrase), but why are NT users (apparently) still looking
for one?

Also, hasn't the 127 char length basically put Crack (even if it's
MD5-ified) out of business?

-- 
Bob Bernstein         
at                    obsd2.7 woohoo! and, it's canadian.
Esmond, R.I., USA