The way his attacking sound okay. User's password is the weakest link in most security system. But most parts the story is made up.
1st. He has never run cracker over the network before. Cracking a password with brutal force over network with 1ms round trip (LAN quality), 12 character (all letters, 26) will take this guy many million years. I guess his can't have the good patient for it.
2nd, this guy does not know anything in detail about overflow attack, neither he has done one of the test. He has limited knowlege in unix. At least, he should know the "overflow" is reside in system software, not his.
3rd. he does not know that any back-door password for network device is not work over network. And he don't quite understand network routing - Unless he was missing great amount of detail in how he turned a server into router.
4th. DES algorism and code is pulic accessible. The method his description is to probe triditional UNIX password or MS word password. DES decoding use a different procedure.
1st. He has never run cracker over the network before. Cracking a password with brutal force over network with 1ms round trip (LAN quality), 12 character (all letters, 26) will take this guy many million years. I guess his can't have the good patient for it.
2nd, this guy does not know anything in detail about overflow attack, neither he has done one of the test. He has limited knowlege in unix. At least, he should know the "overflow" is reside in system software, not his.
3rd. he does not know that any back-door password for network device is not work over network. And he don't quite understand network routing - Unless he was missing great amount of detail in how he turned a server into router.
4th. DES algorism and code is pulic accessible. The method his description is to probe triditional UNIX password or MS word password. DES decoding use a different procedure.