Re: How secure is a password and how many characters does it allow?

From: Matthew Hunt (mph@astro.caltech.edu)
Date: 05/17/02 

Date: Thu, 16 May 2002 15:58:57 -0700
From: Matthew Hunt <mph@astro.caltech.edu>
To: Jesper Wallin <z3l3zt@phucking.kicks-ass.org>

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 12:22:40AM +0200, Jesper Wallin wrote:

> How will that effect my security? Isn't it more secure to use 128 characters
> instead of 8? Sounds like, if the security was the same the blowfish would
> be default or something similar.. What do You recommend?

DES is the traditional algorithm, and is probably the default for
interoperability with old software and NIS. I've used MD5 for years with
no trouble for the longer password support. If you don't run NIS, then
I don't think there's any reason to stick with DES. 

-- 
Matthew Hunt <mph@astro.caltech.edu> * Inertia is a property
http://www.pobox.com/~mph/           * of matter.
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