[BC] Windows XP firewall, passwords

[Tom Bosscher]

Cowboy wrote:

>  I'm generally known in IT as a particularly paranoid admin.
>  ( though I don't know why )
>  Imagine my glee when I discovered that in some non-Microsoft
>  systems, not only is a space a valid password character, but in some
>  cases so is a backspace !!
> 

	Some 15 years or so ago, my ham radio buddy worked in Benton Harbor at 
the Heathkit-Zenith computer division. Brian was a go to type of guy, 
who could fix just about anything. Had that ham radio common sense 
background, and he became very good at finding leaking RF on the CPU's 
to be plugged so they could meet Part 15.
	Anyway, one day he was hauled in the security department. In the room 
was the head of security, the head of the IT department, and his boss. 
They wanted to know how he could conceal his passwords from them. (I 
have no idea what computer system this would have been at the time).
	Whenever they looked at the password list, behind his login name
was: ********

	"How can you hack that so we can't see it!"
	You have to know he caught on to their ignorance and played it for what 
it was worth. Finally, his own boss caught on.

	Of course the password was the eight asterisks.

	tom bosscher