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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
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Enhancement
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-05-30 15:14:18 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

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.