How To disable pam Checking against Dictionary.

Creating Strong passwords

The best password in the world does little good if you cannot remember it; use acronyms or other mnemonic devices to aid in memorizing passwords.
Here is how to create a simple way to create a good password :

• Over eight characters
• Combines letters, numbers and symbols
• Easy for you to remember, but difficult for others to guess

Make all (or some) of the following substitutions

• For the word "are", use "r"
• For the word "be", use "b"
• For the word "for", use 4
• For the word "nothing", use 0 (zero)
• For the word "to", use 2
• For the word "you" use "u"
• For the word "we", use "v"
• For any numbers, type the number
• If permitted, use "&" for and, or "@" for at.

Example.

"To be or not to be, that is the question" becomes : 2bOn2BtItQ

Or

"lost is the best Series from 2009" becomes : LsdbSft2&9


A friend of mine asked how to disable password checking against dictionary words in Red Hat using pam here is little how to

Open the following file with your favorite editor /etc/pam.d/system-auth eg # vi /etc/pam.d/system-auth

1) Comment out the line referencing to pam_cracklib

# password optional pam_cracklib.so try_first_pass retry=3

2) Remove "use_authtok" from the line following line.

# password sufficient /lib/security/$ISA/pam_unix.so nullok use_authtok md5 shadow

This will disable Dictionary password checking when creating or changing passwords.