"Debugging" a password dialog

[Robert Shearman]

David Gümbel wrote:

>Hi everybody,
>
>
>
>
>I am trying to get an application to run under Wine that requires a login 
>with a username and a password. The program runs all fine, however I can't  
>login with data that should work (and AFAIK works under Windows). 
>
>Having entered the password, in the corresponding part of the dialog I only 
>see "*****" (which is correct). However, when I change focus to some other 
>part of that dialog afterwards, the password field shows 
>"*************" (way more asterisks than before). The previous (i.e. 
>correct) length of ****s is restored when setting the focus back onto the 
>password field.
>  
>

Are you sure this isn't a security feature of the program? Does the 
program exhibit this behaviour in Windows?

>I have reason to believe that the password I entered is not correctly passed 
>on to the login procedure of the program. However, I am sort of badly 
>lacking a nice idea how to efficiently debug this thingy and verify 
>(falsify ;) that I'm right. So, does anybody have an idea?
>  
>

It is unlikely, but not impossible to be a bug in the edit control. That 
code has been around for ages and is well tested, but then again this 
program could be using some really weird side effects. I would look 
elsewhere though. What is the password being checked against? Is it 
going over the network? Is it reading in a file off the disk and 
processing it? Is it using cryptography functions? Answering these will 
give you some clues with which to start debugging with.

Rob