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Yes and no. You could argue the infamous Debian openssl bug reduced entropy [1], but it really is about compromised keys. Or in this case compromised passwords.
by e12e 6y ago
Yes and no. You could argue the infamous Debian openssl bug reduced entropy [1], but it really is about compromised keys. Or in this case compromised passwords.
[1] in a sense, this is of course obviously and literally true (that it is about entropy). But I think the more interesting distinction is between leaked secrets, and "bad" secrets - in that light the "Debian keys" all form a group of "leaked" secret keys. There's nothing inherently wrong with the generated keys - but you'd have to improbably unlucky to "accidentally" generate any given compromised key using a good rng. In the same way, the password "TGSCfkL$seG2@tn5DowiFJ$nPj%KW#vMT" that bitwarden just generated for me isn't inherently bad - until now, that it's been published/leaked.
So I'm not sure I agree that it's all/only about entropy.
I think it illustrates well that secrets and especially those managed by people (such as passwords and passphrases) have systemic component: the system seen as a whole incorporates users, other systems as well as any one given system (Gmail is affected by leaked Hotmail accounts, and vice-versa).
- ithkuil 6y agoI'm not disagreeing. I just wanted to highlight to to break a password you need a) to guess it b) to verify it. Leaking the hashes affects (b)