Linux.DaveCentral.com System Utilities - Security, Page 1
Huge collection of word lists for password checking, etc.
Cracklib
Proactive password security library by Alec Muffett. The idea is simple: try to prevent users from choosing passwords that could be guessed by "Crack" by filtering them out, at source.
Primary archive: ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/comp.sources.misc/
John the Ripper Password Cracker
The authors present a new proactive password checking technique based on decision trees; the idea is to help users avoid choosing weak passwords, but without the overhead of an enormous dictionary. Using decision trees as password classifiers, they managed to represent dictionaries with a compression factor of 100 and an error of 1%. An accurate comparative evaluation with existing proactive password checkers is also presented. The authors have released a public domain implementation of their checker.
passwd2.txt ``Foiling the Cracker'': A Survey of, and Improvements to, Password Security- Daniel V. Klein Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15217 dvk@sei.cmu.edu +1 412 268 7791
With the rapid burgeoning of national and international networks, the question of system security has become one of growing importance. High speed inter-machine communication and even higher speed computational processors have made the threats of system ``crackers,'' data theft, data corruption very real. This paper outlines some of the problems of current password security by demonstrating the ease by which individual accounts may be broken. Various techniques used by crackers are outlined, and finally one solution to this point of system vulnerability, a proactive password checker, is proposed.
PAM
The Linux-PAM System Administrators' Guide- A reference guide for available