Login Accepts Multiple Passwords

glassblowerscatglassblowerscat
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
This morning I discovered that while my current password is the only one that works for the keychain, you can still log on to my machine if you have either the current one or one of the two previous ones I have used.



I have a G4 533mhz running 10.2. How can I make this stop and go back to just one password?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    shetlineshetline Posts: 4,695member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by glassblowerscat

    This morning I discovered that while my current password is the only one that works for the keychain, you can still log on to my machine if you have either the current one or one of the two previous ones I have used.



    I have a G4 533mhz running 10.2. How can I make this stop and go back to just one password?



    In 10.2 (this was changed in 10.3*) only the first eight characters of a password are significant. If the passwords you're using only differ after the eighth character, they won't be considered different passwords at all. Could this be the problem?



    *I believe that even in 10.3 that, if you're updating from an earlier version of OS X, you need to change your password at least once to get something about the new password system to kick in completely. (Whether that relates to the eight-character thing or not, I don't know.)
  • Reply 2 of 5
    glassblowerscatglassblowerscat Posts: 35member
    Yeah, that's it. 30 years of UNIX and we still have eight-character passwords. Ain't life grand.



    Thanks for the help.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    dobbydobby Posts: 797member
    With Solaris you just write your own PAM to implement the security you want. You can download SUN's PAM source from their site.

    Should be available to OSX as well.



    Dobby.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    FYI, glassblowerscat, I'm trimming down your signature because it is so disproportionately large. I'm usually lenient with regards to the signature section of the posting guidelines, but yours a bit much for now.



    There's something to be said about signatures that take up more space than all of your posts... and that something is not a good thing.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    glassblowerscatglassblowerscat Posts: 35member
    Thanks for the help, all. As I get further into the depths of the OS I'll probably get this stuff figured out.



    I'll also probably figure out how to not have really oversized signatures. My apologies for the length.
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