Unreasonable Limit on Open Firmware Passwords

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."

Comments

Speculation

[Mikey-San]

It sounds like this isn't a bug in Open Firmware (thankfully), but Apple's OF Password app. If so, we just need to wait for an update to the app, and can still set passwords with "U" manually.

Does anyone have more info regarding where this bug originates?

Re:Alrighty men..

[HiredMan]

Microsofy story of the day - yet another hole that will get you owned that we're disclosing and patching after years of vulnerability.

Apple story of the day - bug disallows a certain character in little used Openfirmware password.

Slashdot spin - both platforms have bugs. Fair and Balanced - Slashdot News! ;)

=tkk

Not just the U character

[rtm1]

This bug happens to other characters too. I once set an open firmware password with the character '{' in it, and OF wouldn't take it at boot time. The lowercase '[' worked fine though.

I think this is a problem with the Open Firmware Password application using a different character set than Open Firmware itself. So some characters you can type in the OF Password app you can't type in OF itself. Or maybe OF just doesn't like the shift key...