Bug 11761

Summary: Password similarity checking
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: selleck
Component: cracklibAssignee: Cristian Gafton <gafton>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.2Keywords: FutureFeature
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Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Enhancement
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-05-30 15:14:18 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description selleck 2000-05-30 15:14:18 UTC
When used by PAM to check passwords, a 6 character password being changed
to a 20 character password gives a "too similar" error because of the
number of similar letters.  THere should be an option to have the
similarity 'score' reduced based on the length of the new password.

eg:
password -> swordfish
... new password is "too similar" ... but not very long either.
password -> aswordfishatemyboat
... still too similar?

Comment 1 Nalin Dahyabhai 2000-07-10 19:43:35 UTC
When md5 passwords are not being used, the effective password
length is 8.  The words "swordfis" and "aswordfi" are indeed similar.