Need a strong, but easy to remember password? No need to remember, generate it! Up to 48 chars, works on any unix-like system:


read -s pass; echo $pass | md5sum | base64 | cut -c -16


Joe -

========================================

MD5SUM creates a 128 bit hash.

Base64 turns a binary number into ASCII

cut – simply removes sections for each line.

Output looks like:

n@H:~$ read -s pass; echo $pass | md5sum | base64 | cut -c -16
(I entered: abcdefg)
MDIwODYxYzhjM2Zl

Noob thing.

Might be interesting to find out if your password is on the list.

The top 25 worst passwords.

How do you change your password?


:~$ passwd


You will get output that looks like:

Changing password for (youruserid)
(current) UNIX password:
Enter new UNIX password:
Retype new UNIX password:
passwd: password updated successfully
:~$

Wayno

Tiger is a package consisting of Bourne Shell scripts, C code and data files which is used for checking for security problems on a UNIX system.  It scans system configuration files, file systems, and user configuration files for possible security problems and reports  them.   The  command  tig‐exp(8) can be used to obtain explanations of the problems reported by tiger.

You  can  configure  tiger  by  adjusting the Tiger_ variables in the /etc/tiger/tigerrc configuration file. For each available module (see MODULES below) there is a corresponding variable in the configuration file that determines whether the module is run. All of the variables names start with Tiger_check_ and should be set equal to Y to run, or N to skip. Other configuration variables will modify the behaviour of some modules, and should be adjusted based on the operating system.

The /etc/tiger/tiger.ignore configuration file defines a set of messages that will not be presented in the report even if any of the modules gener‐ate  them.   If  the  file  exists,  all the entries (line by line) are used as extended regular expressions that are compared against each message (notice that it will introduce some overhead which grows with the size of the file).  For more information on this mechanism read the README.ignore document.

jeremy@dynamicdesignz:~$ sudo apt-get install tiger

jeremy@dynamicdesignz:~$ sudo tiger
[sudo] password for jeremy:
Tiger UN*X security checking system
Developed by Texas A&M University, 1994
Updated by the Advanced Research Corporation, 1999-2002
Further updated by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino, 2001-2007
Covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL)

Configuring…

Will try to check using config for ‘i686′ running Linux 2.6.35-25-generic…
–CONFIG– [con005c] Using configuration files for Linux 2.6.35-25-generic. Using
configuration files for generic Linux 2.
Tiger security scripts *** 3.2.2, 2007.08.28.00.00 ***
23:18> Beginning security report for dynamicdesignz.
23:18> Starting file systems scans in background…
23:18> Checking password files…
23:18> Checking group files…
23:18> Checking user accounts…
23:18> Checking .rhosts files…
23:18> Checking .netrc files…
23:18> Checking ttytab, securetty, and login configuration files…
23:18> Checking PATH settings…
23:18> Checking anonymous ftp setup…
23:18> Checking mail aliases…
23:18> Checking cron entries…
23:18> Checking ‘inetd’ configuration…
23:18> Checking ‘tcpd’ configuration…
23:18> Checking ‘services’ configuration…
23:18> Checking NFS export entries…
23:18> Checking permissions and ownership of system files…
–CONFIG– [con010c] Filesystem ‘devtmpfs’ used by ‘none’ is not recognised as a valid filesystem
23:18> Checking for indications of break-in…

–CONFIG– [con010c] Filesystem ‘devtmpfs’ used by ‘none’ is not recognised as a valid filesystem

23:18> Performing rootkit checks…

23:19> Performing system specific checks…
/bin/grep: /etc/inittab: No such file or directory

~DynamicDesignz.net