SunOS : Security enhancement

[Lyle Wiedeman <wiedeman@uci.edu>]

Dear DDCS clients,

We announced last fall that to counter a rising incidence of efforts
to gain unauthorized access to UCI systems, OAC would periodically
run security checks, such as looking for easily guessed passwords.

A recent effort has disclosed a number of such vulnerable passwords,
and the owners of those accounts are being encouraged to select
more secure passwords.

To complement this effort, OAC-DDCS has revised the yppasswd program.
Yppasswd is the program with which users of Unix systems in NIS
domains (i.e., cluster of machines sharing a user base) set their
passwords.  This program has been revised to reject vulnerable
passwords.  

This change affects all DDCS-supported systems in NIS domains.  Other
than encouraging the selection of more secure passwords, this change
should not have any effect on the operation of affected systems.

If you notice any difficulty in setting passwords, please contact
DDCS (dcs@uci.edu).

    Lyle Wiedeman