7 ms·

True, but in reality you're probably sending that password over something less secure (like an SSL connection) that doesn't require quite as long (but still a v

by alexkus 14y ago

True, but in reality you're probably sending that password over something less secure (like an SSL connection) that doesn't require quite as long (but still a very long time) to crack. Anything is only as secure as the weakest link in the chain. If (I'm sure you don't) you allow your browser to save that password so that you don't have to enter it every time then you just need one cleverly designed trojan to be run on your machine (probably easier to do than waiting 4.84E34 years to crack a password) to grab the saved passwords cache from your browser and it's no longer secret.

raverbashing 14y ago
There you go 30 chars password don't matter. Sure, it's not low hanging fruit, but it's not troublesome if you're the target Why? Weakness 1: Because it's written down somewhere. Weakness 2..n: weaker links in the chain
- DanBC 14y ago
  > Weakness 1: Because it's written down somewhere. This should be part of your risk assessment. For most people and most passwords the risk is not someone riffling through your wallet to find the card with your 30 character password. The risk is from criminal gangs hacking a system and downloading a huge database of usernames / password hashes, and then performing an offline attack on those hashes. For most people writing a good password down and keeping the password safely is better than using a weak password.
  - raverbashing 14y ago
    True That´s why I use a 'throwaway' password for most unimportant accounts. Sure, may be easy to break, but it isn't logging in to my gmail. Don't forget also the risk of getting locked out of your account.
    - bigiain 14y ago
      I fell victim to that once, when I hadn't "upgraded" the re-used throwaway password I'd used to register to see what some random website was. When my throwaway password got exposed (in cleartext facepalm!) by PerlMonks, within a day or so someone had used it to send Acai Berry spam through my Twitter account (which 'd completely forgotten was still using a shared/throwaway password even though it had turned from "some random new website I was curious about" into "somewhere where I actually care about my online reputation"). Just don't re-used passwords _anywhere_ - choose a password generation/storage solution that works across all your devices, and use it to generate unique strong passwords for everything. (1PassWord + DropBox works great for me across my MacOSX, iOS, Android, and Windows devices - I occasionally would like it on Linux too, but rarely enough that I'm satisfied to use my phone and re-type passwords in Linux)
      - takluyver 14y ago
        If Linux support is more important, LastPass works very nicely. Although using it on mobile devices is a 'premium' feature, at $1 per month.
      - raverbashing 14y ago
        Interesting. It is certainly needed to "upgrade" passwords sometimes. My beef with 1PW is that it's a single point of failure, not to mention inconvenience/risks. For example, what if I need to check gmail in a trusted, but borrowed device. The main issue I think is that using only one password for security is insufficient (but not necessarily go for a 2-factor auth)
        bigiain 14y ago
        I don't see it as "single point of failure", at least not when your using Dropbox syncing - I've got versions of Dropbox running on two phones, an iPad, two laptops, my iMac, and my home theatre box. I've also got a copy of the data available from Dropbox's servers if I even need. (And there is a risk of a corruption to the synced-everywhere datafile propagating to all those places before it's noticed, but 4 of those copies are backed up with Time Machine (in two different physical locations), and Dropbox stores archived versions for me as well).
- rorrr 14y ago
  I store my passwords in KeePass, protected by one long password stored in my head.
rorrr 14y ago
> The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a statement that says SSL certificates with a key length of 1,024 bits or fewer will be insufficient for security after December 31, 2010 > It is recommended that the algorithms and key sizes in the "Through 2030" row (e.g., 2048-bit RSA) should be used to provide the cryptographic protection http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-57/sp800-57-Part1-revised2_Mar08-2007.pdf http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-57/sp800-57-P... 1024 bit is impossible to bruteforce. Simply incrementing an integer 2^1024 times will take more energy than our whole universe has. Heck, even 128 bit would take 3.1×10^19 years to bruteforce with that GPU setup. My citibank.com uses a 256-bit connection. SSL is not "less secure" than my 30-character password (correction: 128-bit one is a bit less secure, but 256-bit one is much more secure). If it were, all the banks would be freaking out and would shut down their web interfaces.
- lucian1900 14y ago
  I think the suggestion of SSL being less secure was based on it possibly having some vulnerability or other (which, historically, has happened), not necessarily having to brute force it. Hashes don't tend to have side-channel attacks.
- agl 14y ago
  RSA keys are composite numbers. Bruteforcing them involves factoring, not trying 2^n possibilities. A bruteforce of a 1024-bit RSA key possible to be published this decade and likely by 2030. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_number_field_sieve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_number_field_sieve
DanBC 14y ago
Yes, there might be other attacks on the password, but rorr is responding directly to part of the article which claims > Gosney’s system elevates password cracking to the next level, and effectively renders even the strongest passwords* protected with weaker encryption algorithms, like Microsoft’s LM and NTLM, obsolete.

by alexkus 14y ago

raverbashing 14y ago

There you go 30 chars password don't matter. Sure, it's not low hanging fruit, but it's not troublesome if you're the target Why? Weakness 1: Because it's written down somewhere. Weakness 2..n: weaker links in the chain

DanBC 14y ago
> Weakness 1: Because it's written down somewhere. This should be part of your risk assessment. For most people and most passwords the risk is not someone riffling through your wallet to find the card with your 30 character password. The risk is from criminal gangs hacking a system and downloading a huge database of usernames / password hashes, and then performing an offline attack on those hashes. For most people writing a good password down and keeping the password safely is better than using a weak password.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  True That´s why I use a 'throwaway' password for most unimportant accounts. Sure, may be easy to break, but it isn't logging in to my gmail. Don't forget also the risk of getting locked out of your account.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    I fell victim to that once, when I hadn't "upgraded" the re-used throwaway password I'd used to register to see what some random website was. When my throwaway password got exposed (in cleartext facepalm!) by PerlMonks, within a day or so someone had used it to send Acai Berry spam through my Twitter account (which 'd completely forgotten was still using a shared/throwaway password even though it had turned from "some random new website I was curious about" into "somewhere where I actually care about my online reputation"). Just don't re-used passwords _anywhere_ - choose a password generation/storage solution that works across all your devices, and use it to generate unique strong passwords for everything. (1PassWord + DropBox works great for me across my MacOSX, iOS, Android, and Windows devices - I occasionally would like it on Linux too, but rarely enough that I'm satisfied to use my phone and re-type passwords in Linux)
    - takluyver 14y ago
      If Linux support is more important, LastPass works very nicely. Although using it on mobile devices is a 'premium' feature, at $1 per month.
    - raverbashing 14y ago
      Interesting. It is certainly needed to "upgrade" passwords sometimes. My beef with 1PW is that it's a single point of failure, not to mention inconvenience/risks. For example, what if I need to check gmail in a trusted, but borrowed device. The main issue I think is that using only one password for security is insufficient (but not necessarily go for a 2-factor auth)
      - bigiain 14y ago
        I don't see it as "single point of failure", at least not when your using Dropbox syncing - I've got versions of Dropbox running on two phones, an iPad, two laptops, my iMac, and my home theatre box. I've also got a copy of the data available from Dropbox's servers if I even need. (And there is a risk of a corruption to the synced-everywhere datafile propagating to all those places before it's noticed, but 4 of those copies are backed up with Time Machine (in two different physical locations), and Dropbox stores archived versions for me as well).
rorrr 14y ago
I store my passwords in KeePass, protected by one long password stored in my head.

rorrr 14y ago

> The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued a statement that says SSL certificates with a key length of 1,024 bits or fewer will be insufficient for security after December 31, 2010 > It is recommended that the algorithms and key sizes in the "Through 2030" row (e.g., 2048-bit RSA) should be used to provide the cryptographic protection http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-57/sp800-57-Part1-revised2_Mar08-2007.pdf http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-57/sp800-57-P... 1024 bit is impossible to bruteforce. Simply incrementing an integer 2^1024 times will take more energy than our whole universe has. Heck, even 128 bit would take 3.1×10^19 years to bruteforce with that GPU setup. My citibank.com uses a 256-bit connection. SSL is not "less secure" than my 30-character password (correction: 128-bit one is a bit less secure, but 256-bit one is much more secure). If it were, all the banks would be freaking out and would shut down their web interfaces.

lucian1900 14y ago
I think the suggestion of SSL being less secure was based on it possibly having some vulnerability or other (which, historically, has happened), not necessarily having to brute force it. Hashes don't tend to have side-channel attacks.
agl 14y ago
RSA keys are composite numbers. Bruteforcing them involves factoring, not trying 2^n possibilities. A bruteforce of a 1024-bit RSA key possible to be published this decade and likely by 2030. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_number_field_sieve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_number_field_sieve

DanBC 14y ago

Yes, there might be other attacks on the password, but rorr is responding directly to part of the article which claims > Gosney’s system elevates password cracking to the next level, and effectively renders even the strongest passwords* protected with weaker encryption algorithms, like Microsoft’s LM and NTLM, obsolete.