On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Ray Van Dolson rayvd@bludgeon.org wrote:
On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0100, Matt Keating wrote:
Hi,
I've found a bug/problem with my centos 5.5 server. Any users who have a password of 9 characters or more, only the first 9 characters are used by the OS... eg. i set my password to "123456789" and i try logon via ssh with password "123456789ofgjdfuh" - it lets me in. and if i set my password to "qwertasdfGHJB" and i enter "qwertasdfSDWQWSDS" - it lets me in...
The 'passwd' command only recognises the first 9 characters too...
Has anyone seen this before, or know how to fix it? I feel its a major security risk and would like it fixed ASAP.
Sounds like you're using DES password hashes instead of the newer MD5 style.
If you take a peek at some of the password entries in your /etc/shadow do they have a $1$ at the beginning? If not, you're probably using DES which is limited to 8 characters.
Sounds like you're on the money. I didn't install this server, so I didn't choose the security stuff. Passwords don't start with $....
There are a few other places where password length, strength, etc can be configured, however I don't recall them off the top of my head.
This is almost certainly not sshd's fault. :)
Ray
Will update shortly....