Re: Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy)
Thanks to everyone, First let me say ECBDIC was not a consideration, since if I ever had to access my home mainframe from overseas it would most likely be with my own laptop with security of my choice, not what a hotel or cyber cafe provides. But using the solution I think I have found a local computer could be used. Tom Brennan provided a great help by pointing out the Language options in the Windows Control Panel. With that in mind I printed the special characters on the US board and the Italy keyboard and then put them into HxD (excellent HEX Editor from mh-nexus.de) and here is part of what we get... (looks better with fixed fonts) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F 21 40 23 24 25 5E 26 2A 28 29 5F 2B 00 00 00 00 !@#$%^&*()_+ US 0010 21 22 A3 24 25 26 2F 28 29 3D 3F 5E 00 00 00 00 !"£$%&/()=?^ IT So the moral of this story is if you want to go overseas and use special characters, before you go, make yourself up a little spreadsheet of how the US and whatever foreign country you are interested in assigns HEX values to special characters. -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy)
This is just some wild guessing and assumptions: In Windows there's a Language option in the Control Panel where you can specify Italy and many other places I've never been to. I just did that and the top row on my keyboard comes out like this when I hold the shift key: EN English: !@#$%^&*()_+ IT Italy:!"£$%&/()=?^ So if you were using a PC belonging to an Italian, maybe the odd characters were typed but you couldn't tell because of the asterisk echo in a password field. If that's the case, then yes, copy/paste should work because it isn't the codepage or hex code that is changing between countries (non-mainframe), it's the keyboard. But I would have thought the printed text on an Italian keyboard would also reflect these changes. So maybe this isn't such a good theory after all. John Mattson wrote: I try to include the special characters on standard US keyboards in some of my passwords. On a trip it Italy, I attempted to login to some websites (not anything very secure of course) and I found that the passwords always failed. I could only conclude that the local hex encoding for the ! @ and/or # characters was different from what it is on a US keyboard. Now since these are in pretty common use, especially @ and #, I thought they would be no problem, but I was wrong. Now, I could carry my passwords on a US thumb drive and paste them, but I would rather find out what special characters are common to most European keyboards, and select from those. I have not found anything helpful in Google. Does anyone have and information on this? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy)
On Mon, 16 May 2016 22:11:32 -0300, Clark Morris wrote: >[Default] On 16 May 2016 14:33:18 (John Mattson) wrote: > >>I... On a trip it Italy, I attempted to login to some >>websites ... > >The @ sign,# sign and $ sign are problematic within EBCDIC since they >are nationals and vary by country, the hex value for a $ is used for >the pound sterling sign in Britain and the Yen sign in Japan. You >need to use special characters that are both stable across all EBCDIC >code pages and all ISO (ASCII) code pages and are acceptable as input >for passwords. > ... And meet your admins' and auditors' criteria for password strength. https://xkcd.com/936/ But if the OP was trying to login to websites, EBCDIC should hardly have been a consideration. (Unless he was using an EBCDIC terminal to access an ASCII website.) -- gil -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy)
[Default] On 16 May 2016 14:33:18 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main johnmattson...@gmail.com (John Mattson) wrote: >I try to include the special characters on standard US keyboards in >some of my passwords. On a trip it Italy, I attempted to login to some >websites (not anything very secure of course) and I found that the >passwords always failed. I could only conclude that the local hex encoding >for the ! @ and/or # characters was different from what it is on a US >keyboard. Now since these are in pretty common use, especially @ and #, I >thought they would be no problem, but I was wrong. The @ sign,# sign and $ sign are problematic within EBCDIC since they are nationals and vary by country, the hex value for a $ is used for the pound sterling sign in Britain and the Yen sign in Japan. You need to use special characters that are both stable across all EBCDIC code pages and all ISO (ASCII) code pages and are acceptable as input for passwords. Clark Morris >Now, I could carry my passwords on a US thumb drive and paste them, but >I would rather find out what special characters are common to most European >keyboards, and select from those. I have not found anything helpful in >Google. Does anyone have and information on this? > >-- >For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, >send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Re: Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy)
Google A problem is not just that the hex associated with a given graphic may be different, but also issued of the ASCII graphic, the Italian keyboard mapping, and the ASCII to EBCDIC translation table. ! is always a big problem! Charles -Original Message- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] On Behalf Of John Mattson Sent: Monday, May 16, 2016 2:33 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy) I try to include the special characters on standard US keyboards in some of my passwords. On a trip it Italy, I attempted to login to some websites (not anything very secure of course) and I found that the passwords always failed. I could only conclude that the local hex encoding for the ! @ and/or # characters was different from what it is on a US keyboard. Now since these are in pretty common use, especially @ and #, I thought they would be no problem, but I was wrong. Now, I could carry my passwords on a US thumb drive and paste them, but I would rather find out what special characters are common to most European keyboards, and select from those. I have not found anything helpful in Google. Does anyone have and information on this? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
Special characters in passwords from non-US computers (Italy)
I try to include the special characters on standard US keyboards in some of my passwords. On a trip it Italy, I attempted to login to some websites (not anything very secure of course) and I found that the passwords always failed. I could only conclude that the local hex encoding for the ! @ and/or # characters was different from what it is on a US keyboard. Now since these are in pretty common use, especially @ and #, I thought they would be no problem, but I was wrong. Now, I could carry my passwords on a US thumb drive and paste them, but I would rather find out what special characters are common to most European keyboards, and select from those. I have not found anything helpful in Google. Does anyone have and information on this? -- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
