Article 160943 of comp.os.vms:
This is getting ridiculous. In 1991, I posted the following to INFO-VAX:

| From:	GWDGV1::MOELLER      "Wolfgang J. M:oller, GWDG" 19-JUL-1991 10:25
| To:	GWDGI::"info-vax@sri.com"
| CC:	MOELLER
| Subj:	More "fun" with UCX FTP
| 
| I reported the following problem UCX FTP to DEC a few days ago;
| they didn't yet get back to me, so it looks like it's not yet known:
| 
| A user reported that he could no longer access his files via FTP
| after changing his password; the funny thing was that the
| UCX FTP server would reject him with "authorization failure"
| *before even asking for the password*.
| 
| Turns out that his new encrypted password happens to have
| a zero first byte, and that UCX$FTPD decides from this fact
| that he has no password at all (therefore trying to log him in 
| without asking for the password, which then fails).
| The correct test, of course, is to test all of the 
| encryted password (a Quadword) for zero.
| 
| Thanks to DISM32, I could make up a patch for the latest UCX$FTPD image
| (identification UCX V1.3A-08) that we happen to have obtained from DEC:
| -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| ! patch UCX$FTPD (image ID = UCX V1.3A-08)
| ! such that it does not consider a password void
| ! which happens to have a ZERO least significant byte
| !
| ! w.j.m. 15-jul-1991
|[...]

What has happened since:

	In 1991, I got two more chances to report this problem to DEC
	via "official" channels (since I was told twice that my error
	report had been lost [to put it bluntly]).

	By the end of 1992, I happened to communicate with an UCX engineering
	manager by E-mail, mentioned the problem (which of course wasn't known
	to them), and indeed got it fixed in a 'released' version (UCX V2.0E)
	rather promptly.

	So early in 1993, I started forgetting about all of this ...

	Last week, I was surprised to learn from the German "DECUSnet" ALPHA
	(which just migrated from VAX/Multinet to ALPHA/UCX) that recently,
	some people found themselves unable to connect via FTP ...

	A superficial check seems to indicate that the above problem is
	present _today_ in most/all versions of UCX (4.1 VAX, 3.3 AXP, 4.1 AXP)
	Seems that 2.0E was the _only_ version that had it fixed.

	Please, could someone else try & report this to DEC again !!!

	The little command file below my .sig will help you find the
	users affected on your system (about every 256th).
	
Wolfgang J. Moeller, Tel. +49 551 2011516 or -510, moeller@gwdvms.dnet.gwdg.de
GWDG, D-37077 Goettingen, F.R.Germany   |       Disclaimer: No claim intended!
<moeller@decus.decus.de>  ----- <moeller@gwdg.de>  -----  <w.moeller@ieee.org>
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$! find users with last byte of encrypted password = 00
$!
$ open/read/share SYSUAF$ 'f$parse("SYSUAF","SYS$SYSTEM:.DAT")'
$loop:
$ read/nolock/end=eof SYSUAF$ uaf_rec
$!
$ UAF$S_USERNAME = 32
$ UAF$T_USERNAME = 4
$ UAF$Q_PWD = 340
$!
$ pwd_lo=f$cvui(uaf$q_pwd*8,32,uaf_rec)
$ pwd_hi=f$cvui(uaf$q_pwd*8+32,32,uaf_rec)
$ write sys$output f$fao("!AS: !XL!XL !#*<",-
	f$extract(uaf$t_username,uaf$s_username,uaf_rec),-
	pwd_hi,pwd_lo,-
	((pwd_lo.ne.0).or.(pwd_hi.ne.0)).and.((pwd_lo.and.%xFF).eq.0))
$ goto loop
$!
$eof:
$ close SYSUAF$
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