Security Implications of Novell eDirectory.

[steven.sporen () za pwcglobal com]

Hi,

I was wondering what people's thoughts were regarding the product Novell
eDirectory. I've had a quick look at the implementation and have found that
eDirectory's passwords are case-insensitive. Comparing this to case
sensitive
passwords this radically reduces the number of passwords the system can
use.

ie.

  Case Sensitive         Case Insensitive
  26                     52                 Alpha
  10                     10                 Numeric
  26                     26                 Special
  ----                   ----
  62                     88

Thus for a password 8 characters long we get the following number of
combinations respectively.

  62^8-1                 88^8-1

This means that case sensitive passwords are 16.47 times stronger than case
insensitive.

Could I deduce that from this using Active Directory vs. eDirectory, AD is
16.47
times stronger with passwords than secure in a password sense? Is this a
fair
statement?

Regards
  Steven
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