[Info-vax] VMS humor

[Some Dude]

On Wednesday, December 30, 2020 at 12:08:15 AM UTC-5, xyzz wrote:
> On Tuesday, December 29, 2020 at 5:49:23 PM UTC-5, Michael Moroney wrote: 
> > Does anyone else wonder if the drug manufacturers use the VMS password 
> > generator to name new drugs? :-)
> On x86, it will be harder to pronounce: 
> 
> $ set password/generate=16/algo=mixed 
> Old password: 
> 
> knE~yAZ7dv=K]+Ui 
> 3t;yh58-6T1[Oa7; 
> 40Ie652I[6xlW3Yl 
> ud58{>!1&R17h7uo 
> dRcp7Se{'8^1<mK0 
> 
> Choose a password from this list, or press RETURN to get a new list

The "line noise" password generator comes with the Enhanced Password Management patch for earlier versions.  If PWDMIX is set for the account. SET PASSWORD/GENERATE will default to "line noise" and use the previous alphabetic one if PWDMIX is clear. The password changes include allowing alphabetic generation up to 32 characters although the algorithm sometimes breaks down past 25 characters or so and will not always produce 5 choices. X86 will continue to include SYS$FORGE_WORD-generated passwords.

The example policy module included with the Enhanced Password Management kit supports both strict rules (at least one upper case, one lower case, one sad emoji and the name of your favorite astronaut)  and the better method of "must contain n categories" where the example defines upper, lower, numeric, and special characters as categories.  The policy module is supplied in C source form  for folks to modify.  This would allow a SMOP to produces a sliding category rule such as "24 or more characters no category requirements, 16-23 - any 2 categories, below 16 - any 3 categories."