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Your Dartmouth Name Directory (DND) name and password identify you on the
Dartmouth network. It is your electronic fingerprint. It is imperative that you
protect this identity so that someone else cannot impersonate you on the
network.
Responsibilities
Everyone who is a current member of the Dartmouth community has an entry in
a database called the Dartmouth Name Directory (DND). If you are in the DND,
you automatically have access to a wide array of computing resources. Given
that the DND is used to authenticate users for academic and administrative
services, the consequences of an easy-to-guess password have become much more
serious. Every member of the Dartmouth community is responsible for the use and
protection of their password. If you think someone else is using your password
to gain access to Dartmouth services, you should change it immediately.
Rules for Valid Passwords
There are specific rules to which your password must conform in order to be
accepted as a valid password. If your current password does not conform to
these rules, you should change it to one that does. These rules will make it
much more difficult for someone else to guess your password. A mixture of
numbers and upper- and lower-case letters is strongly recommended. Password
rules are:
- It should be eight characters using only numbers, upper and lower case
letters, and common punctuation.
- There can be no more than four characters in sequence (e.g., "12345" or
"abcde" are not allowed).
- It must contain at least five different characters (e.g., "2a3a2a3a" only
contains three different characters so is not allowed).
- It cannot be a word found in the dictionary (e.g., "password").
- It cannot be a reversal of a word found in the dictionary (e.g.,
"drowssap").
- It cannot be a word found in the dictionary plus one additional character
either before or after the word (e.g., "xalgebra" or "algebrax").
- It cannot be a word found in the dictionary with numbers substituted for
look-alike letters (e.g., "passw0rd" or "pa55word").
- It cannot be a word found in the dictionary minus any punctuation, symbols
or numbers (e.g., "oclock" or "soninlaw").
Protecting Your Password
If you use BlitzMail on a computer that is in a public area, make
sure you sign off of BlitzMail whenever you leave the computer. If you
leave a computer while still signed on to your BlitzMail account,
someone else can use your account to send mail that looks like it came from
you; delete messages in your account; read your incoming mail; change your DND
password; etc.
If you are a student and you forget your password, stop by the
Computing Help Desk, located in 172 Carson Hall, between the hours of 9:00 a.m.
and 4:00 p.m., weekdays, to have your password reset. If you are a faculty or
staff member, contact your department's
computing support office. You will be required to show your Dartmouth
ID.
Another way of verifying your identity is to use
Web Authentication. Web Authentication (WebAuth) is a new system designed
to streamline the authentication process for any of Dartmouth's Web-based
systems, to make the process of logging into Web-based systems more secure, and
to provide support for additional operating systems. If you use WebAuth on a
public computer, it is important to quit the Web browser when you leave the
computer so the next person using the it cannot access authenticated Web
pages as if they were you. In addition, if you are using WebAuth on your own
personal computer and you want to navigate to other Web pages, you
can quit the browser or log out of WebAuth before going to other Web
pages.
In addition, there are a few applications that allow you to use
Kerberos authentication to verify your identity. Kerberos software is comprised
of two parts, SideCar and KClient. Once installed and running on your computer,
you simply enter your user name and DND
password in the KClient dialog box to create a Kerberos
"ticket." This ticket is automatically sent to any Kerberos-controlled
application to which you are trying to connect (e.g., BlitzMail). This
ticket is accepted as proof of your identity in lieu of your entering your user
name and password again. Whenever you use Kerberos authentication, you must
remember to close your ticket when you leave a computer so that the next person
using the computer cannot access Kerberos-controlled applications using your
name from the ticket you left behind. On Windows computers, evidence that you
have a ticket will be an open lock icon or a floating window with your name in
it that appears on your desktop. To close your ticket on a Windows computer,
simply close the ticket window on your desktop. There is no visible ticket on
Macintosh computers, so you must remember to open the Kerberos window and
select Destroy ticket if you want to close a Kerberos ticket
on a Macintosh. For additional information on Kerberos and Kerberos tickets,
see Download
Kerberos.
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