Comments on: How to Show Asterisks While Typing Sudo Password in Linux

By: Aaron Kili

Aaron Kili — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 07:28:21 +0000

@Anonymous

The biggest risk is having an indicator when typing the password, I suppose.

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Fri, 02 Oct 2020 21:51:35 +0000

Some people say that having an indicator when typing the password is a risk, perhaps they’re right, but having no indication at all can also be a risk. Scenario: you’re typing in your password and getting no feedback as expected, you press enter and … nothing happens. Surprise! It turns out another input field on another screen had to focus, and your password is now plaintext in your favorite discord channel. Which is the bigger risk?

By: Aaron Kili

Aaron Kili — Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:42:49 +0000

In reply to WQQ.

@WQQ

It is actually disabled by default. So, here, we are only showing how to enable it.

By: WQQ

WQQ — Thu, 18 Apr 2019 17:47:18 +0000

While the asterisk thing is sometimes justified, for the most part it is just a nuisance. What is needed is the capability to optionally disable it.

By: Anthony Thyssen

Anthony Thyssen — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 06:41:44 +0000

In reply to Caleb Cushing. Yes there are reasons for not showing asterisks. And there are also ways to still get keypress feedback without showing how may characters you typed. It all depends on how you set up your "askpass" program. I listed some ideas for this in my study text file passwd_input.txt. And look for "WARNING about using echoed stars..." Here are some ideas... * Output a random number of stars with each character input. But you may need to keep track of the number for 'deletes'. * Show a ascii-art animation (a random muber of steps) for each key... + Cycle a spinning line, \ | / - or pulsing star . + * + . + or a short bar with a star bounce back and forth This does not need to keep track for deletions as you just continue the animation when you get a delete or reset line signal. * Allow the use to turn on no-echo by pressing delete at the start "systemd-ask-password" actually does this, printing "(no echo)".