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I can connect to my host with PuTTY. But when the PuTTY terminal asks for my password, I am not able to enter any letters.
I reinstalled putty.exe, but the results are the same.
Can anyone help me please?
shinokada
Posted 2009-08-03T14:39:29.170
Reputation: 1 635
22
If it just doesn't show anything, this is a security feature of Putty. Type in your password normally and press enter, you should get in.
Putty tries to stop people from knowing how long you password is by not showing it at all in the command prompt. This means that you might think you are unable to enter it, while in reality you are.
Tyler Carter
Posted 2009-08-03T14:39:29.170
Reputation: 660
0
You might want to search something called 'linux password visual feedback' on Google. It's a built-in setting that is hidden in the linux's visudo. You can enable this and it will show you the visual feedback (asterisk) when typing password.
I use this visual feedback a lot because when I need to paste my long password into the terminal, so that this visual feedback can tell me that I'm actually entered something into the terminal. This visual feedback helps some people in some cases like: "is my keyboard working when typing this password"?
The reason they hide the password field instead of putting some dummy asterisk because they thought hacker could guest 'when' you will enter a password with the visual feedback.
So enabling the above visual feedback have disadvantages where the hacker can guest 'when' you will start enter the password and 'how much character' your password is.
MaXi32
Posted 2009-08-03T14:39:29.170
Reputation: 111
I tried my best to explain things that I know with the use cases. Of course I didn't read the answer given by others before commenting. I don't like answering something like giving definition. I know it already has the answer but I'm helping others to have alternative way how to overcome what they ask which no one has given. – MaXi32 – 2019-08-05T07:25:53.073
2Also, this is not just limited to PuTTY. This is normal operation for many applications; just for future reference for anyone having trouble with a program "not recognizing keyboard input" at a password prompt. – Travis – 2009-08-03T17:20:37.160
1Wow .. this is my 2nd or 3rd answer on SuperUser, and I got a Nice Answer badge. – Tyler Carter – 2009-08-03T19:29:46.257
Because it is a nice answer :) Same behaviour using standard MS telnet, which I'm guessing you've used before if you're using PuTTY – Ciaran – 2009-08-03T20:33:24.310
@Arjan This is, in fact, a feature of Linux/Unix's PAM (pluggable authentication manager). Purely, the password entry is hidden by the remote host as you said. – juniorRubyist – 2018-05-07T06:15:28.000
7I actually wonder if this is related to PuTTY at all. Isn't it just the remote machine that doesn't echo the password (in whatever form)? – Arjan – 2009-10-03T13:47:06.173