Abstract or Summary:
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.

PasswordResearch.com Note: Updated paper that was originally presented at the 1990 Unix Security Workshop.