crypt_blowfish is an efficient implementation of a modern password hashing algorithm, based on the Blowfish block cipher, provided via the crypt(3) and a reentrant interface. It is compatible with bcrypt as used in OpenBSD. It is adaptable to future processor performance improvements, allowing you to arbitrarily increase the processing cost of checking a password while still maintaining compatibility with your older password hashes. The hashes it produces are several orders of magnitude stronger than traditional Unix DES-based or FreeBSD-style MD5-based hashes.
John the Ripper is a fast password cracker, currently available for many flavors of Unix (11 are officially supported, not counting different architectures), Win32, DOS, BeOS, and OpenVMS. Its primary purpose is to detect weak Unix passwords. It supports several crypt(3) password hash types which are most commonly found on various Unix flavors, as well as Kerberos AFS and Windows NT/2000/XP LM hashes. Several other hash types are added with contributed patches.
msulogin is the single-user mode login program used to force the console user to login under a root account before a shell is started. Unlike other implementations of sulogin, this one supports having multiple root accounts on a system. msulogin has been developed as a part of Openwall GNU/*/Linux and is being made available separately primarily for use by other distributions. Currently, msulogin supports only systems with getspnam(3).
Owl (Openwall GNU/*/Linux) is a security-enhanced server operating system with Linux and GNU software as its core. It includes a complete build environment capable of rebuilding the entire system from source, supports multiple architectures (x86, SPARC, and Alpha), and offers some compatibility for packages developed for other major Linux distributions. The primary approach to security is proactive source code review, but several other approaches are used as well.
The Openwall Linux kernel patch is a collection of security "hardening" features for the Linux kernel. In addition to the new features, some versions of the patch contain various security fixes. The "hardening" features of the patch, while not a complete method of protection, provide an extra layer of security against the easier ways to exploit certain classes of vulnerabilities and/or reduce the impact of those vulnerabilities. The patch can also add a little bit more privacy to the system by restricting access to parts of /proc so that users may not see what others are doing.
The tcb suite implements the alternative password shadowing scheme on Openwall GNU/*/Linux (Owl) which allows many core system utilities (passwd(1) being the primary example) to operate with little privilege. It is being made available separately from Owl primarily for use by other distributions. This package contains three core components of the tcb suite: pam_tcb (a PAM module which supersedes pam_unix), libnss_tcb (the accompanying NSS module), and libtcb (a library for accessing tcb shadow files, used by the PAM and NSS modules as well as by user management tools on Owl).
pam_passwdqc is a simple password strength checking module for PAM-aware password changing programs, such as passwd(1). In addition to checking regular passwords, it offers support for passphrases and can provide randomly generated ones. All features are optional and can be (re-)configured without rebuilding.
pam_userpass is a PAM module for use specifically by services implementing non-interactive protocols and wishing to verify a username/password pair. It uses Linux-PAM binary prompts to make it possible for applications to no longer make the flawed assumption that PAM_PROMPT_ECHO_ON requests the username and PAM_PROMPT_ECHO_OFF requests the password. It doesn't perform any actual user authentication; that is left up to further modules in the PAM stack (e.g., to pam_tcb or pam_unix).
phpass is a portable password hashing framework for use in PHP applications. The preferred (most secure) hashing method supported by phpass is the OpenBSD-style bcrypt (known in PHP as CRYPT_BLOWFISH), with a fallback to BSDI-style extended DES-based hashes (known in PHP as CRYPT_EXT_DES), and a last resort fallback to an MD5-based variable iteration count password hashing method implemented in phpass itself.
Re: How does it compares with security linux These two are not even similar, so it is hard to compare them. Rather, I'll describe them briefly: The Openwall Linux kernel patch - a collection...
Re: password file > Please use direct e-mail for questions like this. If there's demand for discussing this kind of stuff between the users of popa3d in public, I am willing to create a popa3...
Re: password file > How do i make this release read a > specified password file, say > /etc/mypasswd.passwd and not the > /etc/passwd file for my virtual users. Please use dir...