A couple of random questions about login

[Bill Oliver]

So, I was watching a TV show the other day where it was one of those things where the good guy tries to break into the bad guy's computer and, because of his great investigative skills, guesses that the password is a word a book from the bad guy's favorite author.  But, first, the good guy tried a couple of other obvious guesses -- the name of the bad guy's boat, etc.

My wife turned to me and said, "If I were the bad guy, I'd just have the computer delete everything if someone entered the boat name, or at least send me a text.  The boat was an obvious guess, and I would never accidentally type it in."

My answer was "That makes sense, but I have no clue about how to do it."

Now I can't get the idea out of my head.  Worse, I've realized that I don't know, at a process level, what happens when one types in a password.  Yes, I know about /etc/password and /etc/shadow files, and I know about encryption.  But I don't know step by step in terms of what processes do what when a password is entered.

So:

1) What happens at a process level when one hits return after typing in a password?  Is everything handled by the kernel? Where is this described?

2) Is it possible to script different responses to different (incorrect) passwords?


Thanks,

billo