Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 13:30:05 -0500 (EST) From: richard <richard@erinet.com> To: "Randy A. Katz" <randyk@ccsales.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ARE THEY ABLE TO CRACK UNIX PASSWORDS??? Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.95.971113131038.2693A-100000@eri.erinet.com> In-Reply-To: <3.0.5.32.19971113085135.00a3ce20@ccsales.com>
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It wouldn't suprise me that password, 5693k, was cracked, or even guessed. It is very weak. A good example of a password is one that is not any kind of proper name or any word that appears in the dictionary. If you insist on some kind of name then try unsusual capitalization and spaces in the password. Something like blaH 34iT . How is the hacker getting in? Through telnet? If so disable all remote logins until you reasses the security of you box and do damage control. If the hacker knows a bit about UNIX in general he/she could have placed a 'trojan horse' program on your box. A trojan horse is a program that acts like a program that it replaced, such as the 'ls' program, but the hacker has added a feature that will spawn a root shell. That means he doesn't even have to know the root password anymore. Other on the list will have to give you advice on how to check for suspicous proggies on your system doing things that they shouldn't. But the first thing to do is don't let the hacker back in. Shut down any service that the hacker used. System security is worth the inconvenience of temporary loss of functionality until you can get your unit in a state that the hacker wiil be less likely successful. An excellent book is 'Practical UNIX and Internet Security" by Oreily and Assoc. The book focuses on security concepts and is not system specific, meaning it talks about most commons flavors of UNIX. - Richard. On Thu, 13 Nov 1997, Randy A. Katz wrote: > OK. > > We're using master.passwd, it seems they can just pull down this file and > crack it. They got my root passwd and logged in and created other users > which have root access. The password they got is something like 5693k. Did > they actually get it from sniffing? > > I just can't believe they guessed that password!???! > > This guys' driving me nuts! Help! > > Thanx, > Randy Katz >
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