It is vitally important that computer hackers are denied access to your computer facilities. Even if the hacker does no apparent damage, there will still be major disruption to services while computers are being reloaded with fresh, reliable copies of the operating system software. You will be asked to type your existing password and your new password twice for confirmation. Choose a password of between six and eight letters containing letters, numbers and punctuation characters. Do not use your name or initials, your logon name, your telephone number, a common English or foreign word, or any of these reversed or repeated.
Programs exist which can crack such passwords.
We now have a new passwd program which performs some checks on the new password to try to reduce the chances of your password being one of those which is easy to guess. This test is fairly complex, each character is considered to be in one of 4 classes lower case letters , upper case letters , digits , and punctuation . In addition there must be at least 3 transitions of class - so the password looks more mixed up. If passwd doesn't like your new password it will print a message which should explain what it doesn't like, it may also suggest adding characters from classes which you arn't using. If you have any problems selecting new password please contact help for more information.