[Info-vax] SSH on VAX - performance impact of break in attempts

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <i53oke$740$1 at pcls6.std.com>, moroney at world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) writes:
>glen herrmannsfeldt <gah at ugcs.caltech.edu> writes:
>
>>VAXman- wrote:
>>(snip)
>
>>> The 12 character username prohibits the 'administrator' account.
>
>>I thought that was changed a long time ago.
>
>>I used to have a VMS account in a place that always made accounts
>>named after someone's last name.  (I suppose unless it was already
>>taken.)  That was about 1985.  I ended up with only the first
>>12 characters of my last name, but conveniently it allowed me
>>to log in typing all 14.  Then, around 1988, VMS changed.
>
>>I believe I was asked if I wanted all 14, but I was too used to
>>the other one by then.
>
>Doesn't VMS simply ignore all characters after the first 12?  I think
>my audit server logs show many breakin attempts against the nonexistent
>ADMINISTRATO account.

The SYSUAF file has a field for USERNAME much larger than the Username:
prompt will accept.  Hwever, the internals of VMS will not maintain more
than 12 characters where usernames are concerned.  

I'm sure that if Rumpelstilzchen had worked in OpenVMS early on in its
evolution, we'd have Usernames capable of at least 15 characters.  That
12 character limitatation is not likely to change in this VMS bigot's
lifetime.
-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

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