[anjbe]

There was an interesting discussion in 2019 after a group of people started cracking the passwords of the original Unix developers that had been obtained from an old /etc/passwd file in this repo (https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/BSD-3-S...).

Rob Pike spoke out against the effort, calling it “distasteful.” https://inbox.vuxu.org/tuhs/CAKzdPgw0Vz8UFbK7c_Jr+RHGMssSxN=...

Nonetheless, in the end every password was cracked. Some highlights:

Steve Bourne: “bourne”

Dennis Ritchie: “dmac”

Kirk McKusick: “foobar”

Brian Kernighan: “/.,/.,”

Ken Thompson: “p/q2-q4!” (a chess move)

Bill Joy: cracked but not posted due to Rob Pike’s comments, but it contained a control character

[jasinjames]

Kernighan's is my favorite. The keyboard layout could be different, but im imagining him rapping his fingers against the three adjacent keys as if the motion itself were a secret handshake.