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geekmaster · 02-13-2012, 01:21 PM

I see that the kindle "passwd" command creates passwords that start with "$1$". According to Wikipedia, that indicates "modular" encryption using MD5 encryption with a salt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypt_(Unix)

The original default root password does not start with "$", so it uses the traditional DES which truncates the password to 8 characters.

So, it turns out that both of my guesses were correct, as to why user-created passwords behave different from default root passwords.

02-13-2012, 01:21 PM	#6
geekmaster Carpe diem, c'est la vie. Posts: 6,433 Karma: 10773670 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Multiverse 6627A Device: K1 to PW3	I see that the kindle "passwd" command creates passwords that start with "$1$". According to Wikipedia, that indicates "modular" encryption using MD5 encryption with a salt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypt_(Unix) The original default root password does not start with "$", so it uses the traditional DES which truncates the password to 8 characters. So, it turns out that both of my guesses were correct, as to why user-created passwords behave different from default root passwords.