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Unreasonable Limit on Open Firmware Passwords

Posted by pudge on from the oh-yeah-there-are-26-letters-not-25 dept.

Lawrence Person writes "Well, this has to be one of the stranger bugs in recent memory: 'If you used Open Firmware Password utility to create a password that contains the capital letter "U", your password will not be recognized during the startup process.' Straight from the mothership. I'm guessing that not too many people use Open Firmware Passwords, but it's a very nasty bug for those who do. Props to the always great As The Apple Turns for pointing this one out."

2 of 82 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Alrighty men.. by YouHaveSnail · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, wait. This is Apple, not Microsoft. Bugs like this are acknowledged, with workarounds and/or patches supplied quickly, and this gives the company character and credibility.

  2. Probably an easy solution for this question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The value $AA is used to "encrypt" the password in OF. Every letter in the password is obfusticated via XOR with this value.

    'U' = $55 XOR $AA = $FF (and this is probably used as a end-of-password marker).