Bug#495402: john: Specify minimum password length

[wohler at newt.com]

Package: john
Version: 1.7.2-3~bpo40+1
Severity: wishlist

I've configured PAM to restrict password creation to 8 or more
characters. It would therefore be a good idea to add an option to
throw out passwords that are less than a given number of characters
since it's just a waste of time to try them. 

For example, let's say we had:

  Minlength = 8

If we were considering the word "fred" from the wordlist, we'd ignore
"fred", but would accept the mangled "fredfred".

Thanks!

p.s. I suppose for symmetry, we could have a Maxlength option too.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable'), (20, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-6-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.utf8)

Versions of packages john depends on:
ii  john-data              1.7.2-3~bpo40+1   active password cracking tool - ch
ii  libc6                  2.3.6.ds1-13etch7 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libssl0.9.8            0.9.8c-4etch3     SSL shared libraries

john recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information