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Password case reversal on logon

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  Password case reversal on logon tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> - 2017-07-26 17:50 +0200
    Re: Password case reversal on logon Brad Rogers <brad@fineby.me.uk> - 2017-07-26 18:10 +0200
      Re: Password case reversal on logon tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> - 2017-07-26 18:30 +0200
        Re: Password case reversal on logon Brad Rogers <brad@fineby.me.uk> - 2017-07-26 21:00 +0200
          Re: Password case reversal on logon tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> - 2017-07-26 23:40 +0200
    Re: Password case reversal on logon Darac Marjal <mailinglist@darac.org.uk> - 2017-07-26 18:40 +0200

#184270 — Password case reversal on logon

Hello.

Can anyone shed some light on why my logon password got it's upper and 
lower case characters reversed?  I needed the caps lock on then use the 
same password with the shift on the correct characters to log on.  I've 
since reset the password successfully and all is fine (so far) but I'd 
like to know what happened.  The only change I made was installing 
winbind, libnss-windbind and libpam-winbind but I don't find anything 
that explains the upper/lower case reversal on password entry.

A normal password change fixed the problem.

thanks,
tony

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#184271

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On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 08:43:43 -0700
tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> wrote:

Hello tony,

>Can anyone shed some light on why my logon password got it's upper and 
>lower case characters reversed?  I needed the caps lock on then use the 
>same password with the shift on the correct characters to log on

Sounds to me as though you, inadvertently, had Caps Lock on when setting
the password.

-- 
 Regards  _
         / )           "The blindingly obvious is
        / _)rad        never immediately apparent"
This is the fifty first state of the USA
Heartland - The The

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#184273

I must have done something like that.  I'd like to find out why so it 
doesn't happen again.  I was working in gadmin-samba with some password 
additions yesterday.  That's the only place I can remember that I did 
any passwords entry.



On 07/26/2017 09:02 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 08:43:43 -0700
> tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> wrote:
>
> Hello tony,
>
>> Can anyone shed some light on why my logon password got it's upper and
>> lower case characters reversed?  I needed the caps lock on then use the
>> same password with the shift on the correct characters to log on
>
> Sounds to me as though you, inadvertently, had Caps Lock on when setting
> the password.
>

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#184281

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On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 09:21:50 -0700
tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> wrote:

Hello tony,

>I must have done something like that.  I'd like to find out why so it 
>doesn't happen again.  

Can be as simple as a finger slipping on to the wrong key.  Here, it may
go unnoticed for some time as my keyboard has no Caps Lock LED on it.  
Thankfully, the login manager I use throws up a warning if Caps Lock is
enabled.

-- 
 Regards  _
         / )           "The blindingly obvious is
        / _)rad        never immediately apparent"
Go away, come back, go away, come back
Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely) - P!nk

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#184288

Obviously my own doing.

Thanks for all the info.  I'll be a bit more careful with the keyboard.


Tony



On 07/26/2017 11:35 AM, Brad Rogers wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Jul 2017 09:21:50 -0700
> tony mollica <tjm3@threedogs.net> wrote:
>
> Hello tony,
>
>> I must have done something like that.  I'd like to find out why so it
>> doesn't happen again.
>
> Can be as simple as a finger slipping on to the wrong key.  Here, it may
> go unnoticed for some time as my keyboard has no Caps Lock LED on it.
> Thankfully, the login manager I use throws up a warning if Caps Lock is
> enabled.
>

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#184275

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On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 08:43:43AM -0700, tony mollica wrote:
>Hello.
>
>Can anyone shed some light on why my logon password got it's upper and 
>lower case characters reversed?  I needed the caps lock on then use 
>the same password with the shift on the correct characters to log on.  
>I've since reset the password successfully and all is fine (so far) 
>but I'd like to know what happened.  The only change I made was 
>installing winbind, libnss-windbind and libpam-winbind but I don't 
>find anything that explains the upper/lower case reversal on password 
>entry.

In theory, this should not be possible. Debian, by default, uses
"shadow" passwords. That means that, instead of storing your password in
/etc/passwd, an encrypted version is stored in /etc/shadow.

"man shadow" states that the encryption process is detailed in "man
crypt". That, in turn, states "By  taking the lowest 7 bits of each of
the first eight characters of the [user's password], a 56-bit key is
obtained". The lowest 7 bits of each character IS enough to
differentiate between the case of the letters.

So, for this to happen, something would need to read /etc/shadow, crack
your password (which means scanning 2**56 possibilities - that's 7.2×10^16
or 72 million billion possibilities), perform the case change and
re-store it in /etc/shadow. The chance of this happening by accident
(that is, the chance of /etc/shadow being corrupted such that the new
password is A) valid and B) a case-changed version of your old password)
is ridiculously small.

>
>A normal password change fixed the problem.
>
>thanks,
>tony
>

-- 
For more information, please reread.

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