8 ms·

Xkcd: Encryptic

120 points by ohazi 13y ago

deletes 13y ago
Image tooltip text made me laugh: >>It was bound to happen eventually. This data theft will enable almost limitless [xkcd.com/792]-style password reuse attacks in the coming weeks. There's only one group that comes out of this looking smart: Everyone who pirated Photoshop.<< [xkcd.com/792]: http://xkcd.com/792/ http://xkcd.com/792/
- RyanZAG 13y ago
  He missed a group of people: any designer who did not entrust their entire professional workflow to a single, for-profit company whose best interests are in moving your workflow in ways that benefit the company over the user. Being dependent on something like Photoshop for your only income is a terrible position to be in, yet it is how I'd describe most designers today.
  - sz4kerto 13y ago
    That situation cannot be (or should not be) avoided if a product is significantly better that any other competitor on the market. You can choose between - depending on the for-profit company - having disadvantage on the marketplace because of inferior tools I think the former is often preferable.
    - bigiain 13y ago
      FWIW, I think people are doing their careers a great dis-service if they're selling themselves just as "Photoshop Technicians".
  - hengheng 13y ago
    Not being able to use CMYK is a terrible perspective if you ever get a chance of printing something.
    - hnha 13y ago
      CMYK is not exclusive to Photoshop, is it?
      - arb99 13y ago
        I guess one of the main competitors to Photoshop is gimp... last time I checked it had bad support for CMYK (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIMP https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIM... )
        hnha 13y ago
        Gimp is just one free alternative, i guess you knew about its cmyk troubles and posted because of that. Why limit yourself to Gimp though? Check.out other alternatives. I posted some in another comment in this thread.
    - RyanZAG 13y ago
      Possibly a kickstarter to code CMYK into gimp would be a good idea? If the gimp team doesn't let you do it, it should be easy enough to fork it with a bit of financial backing from a kickstarter.
  - j2kun 13y ago
    Of course he missed that it's not funny.
- p4bl0 13y ago
  He forgot users of The Gimp ;-).
  - sz4kerto 13y ago
    I don't think they look smart at all ;) /s
sudhirj 13y ago
Anyone care to explain the DES misuse to laypeople? And why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?
- padwan 13y ago
  That's not salt. "Since DES only encrypts in blocks of 64 bits (8 bytes) then encrypting and keeping the length of blocks means that you actually get a very good idea of the length of the password - that is, anything with only one block is a password length between 1 and 8 characters, with two blocks between 9 and 16 characters etc. In addition a password of "1234567812345678" would encrypt into two identical blocks." http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1286 http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1286
- taejo 13y ago
  The passwords don't have a salt: that extra block that some of them have is the second block of the password (each block of 8 bytes is encrypted separately).
- bazzargh 13y ago
  As I understand it, Adobe used ECB mode, which means the blocks are encrypted independently. You can look at the encrypted blocks and see that two different passwords share character sequences. This is I assume what Randall is referring to with the 'crossword' bit - as well as having clues in the hints, solving one password may give you part of another. The suffix may also contain only one or two characters (plus padding) which makes it more plausible to mount a brute force attack. ECB mode is just terrible. As well as these suffix problems, I've seen another example where a company used it to encrypt key-value pair cookies. Of course the keys are always the same...so prefixes were guessable too. And wikipedia has a fantastic example of why its stupid for images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECB_mode#Electronic_codebook_.28ECB.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECB_mode#Electronic_codebook_.2...
- ohwp 13y ago
  "why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?" I'm not sure if this is the case, but sometimes this has to do with 'backwards compatibility'. I've seen databases where some passwords where MD5, some SHA1, some Bcrypt and so on. The login page then will do something like: if(checkBcrypt(password)) { login(); } else if(checkSha1(password) || checkMd5(password)) { updateDbPassword(password); login(); } else { loginError(); }
moomin 13y ago
explainxkcd hasn't worked out the passwords yet.
raws 13y ago
Is there a website out there that will tell you how many times your password has been used based on this database of the 153millions accounts?
- bladedtoys 13y ago
  To make it searchable on your password, someone would have to go through the Adobe set and use the hints to manually figure out the clear text form. Off hand, it's hard to see how posting that on the web could be done responsibly. But until someone does, you could just Google "most common passwords" and if yours is in the set, you win!
  - raws 13y ago
    It is not one of the common ones but I wonder if someone used it and just put it in as a clue which would mean that it's completely compromised...
  - tompaton 13y ago
    no, you have known plain text, so you just have to encrypt your password using the same algorithm and then search the database for matching ciphertext, there's no need to find the clear text for any of the passwords.
    - berberous 13y ago
      you can't re-encrypt since we don't have the keys. but you can search for your e-mail, pull up the associated hash, and then search for the hash to see who else used that password, and list all of their password hints.
      - raws 13y ago
        That's what I had in mind... Anyone care to make a website for that?
  - sect 13y ago
    A rainbow table would probably be more accurate than a password set that comes up on google.
gberger 13y ago
Where can I download the breached file? I want to see if I'm in there...
- raws 13y ago
  no need to download it if you just want to check yourself: http://adobe.cynic.al/ http://adobe.cynic.al/ props to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661774
  - nodata 13y ago
    "bill@microsoft.com was found. You need to change your passwords now."
    - DanBC 13y ago
      example@example.com nospam@nospam.com nospam@here.com Were all found. I feel sorry for the people paying a lot of money to buy these short domain names, and finding huge amounts of spam being delivered to them because people have misused domain names that don't belong to them.
      - p4bl0 13y ago
        Actually example.com is reserved for test usage and this kind of things. You are right for the two others thought.
        DanBC 13y ago
        But using example on someone else's website to avoid using your own email address is not using it in documentation. .invalid would be a better choice. I agree that I'm quibbling over probably unimportant details :-) http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606
      - hnha 13y ago
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
What do the boxes on the right represent? St.peter St.peter St.peter1 password password1 password57 seem to be the first few if I understand correctly.
- jawr 13y ago
  I was thinking that St.peter would have to be peter (NAME1) but then that wouldn't be enough to be it's own block. I'm guessing the split boxes [ ][ ][ ] are characters and the long [\t] are for numbers.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    I think the eight square boxes mean "exactly 8 characters", and the long rectangles mean "up to 8 characters". You can tell them apart (sometimes) because "exactly 8 characters" will match if those 8 characters are re-used by someone else with a longer than 8 character password. And the layout emphasizes the re-use, which is also shown by color coding.
- Kiro 13y ago
  How did you come up with that?
- abraxasz 13y ago
  The favorite of the 12 apostles would be Saint John, not Saint Peter[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved
  - jawr 13y ago
    That's too many characters, plus "Favourite of 12 Apostles" doesn't mean Jesus', it could be the users. I'm not convinced that it's St. though as when they say name1 that would suggest St. was part of it :p
neya 13y ago
As funny as this comic is, it wasn't so funny when my card was hacked and my personal details were released online. Now anyone who searches for my email (on Google) is displayed a (spammy) link to the dumped file containing my email, along with some jumbled letters, possibly my encrypted password. One super-good thing I did when I signed up for adobe was: I created a separate email address (purely by co-incidence) that I used exclusively for Adobe (and for some spammy services like some deal sites, which didn't require my card). As a result, I know for sure that my card was compromised because of the Adobe's breach and no one else. Lessons and observations: 1) I'm glad I bought the CS6. With the cloud comes great risks too. Not to say that you should avoid cloud products, but when you have a version you can own forever, then you might as well go for it. Imagine if I was on CC and my card was hacked and I decided to stop paying Adobe the next month out of frustration. Do you know what will happen? My company will come to a stand-still because I will no longer have access to Photoshop and a huge portion of my company is basically a Media company. 2) Someone else said we're depending too much on Adobe, and I tend to agree. But there is really no superior equivalent for Adobe's Photoshop at the moment. Please don't cite GIMP - I've tried it and it needs a lot of work to even be on par with Photoshop atm. Another factor is the PSD file format which has painfully spread like a Virus and you can't erase it out of your workflow if you're a Media shop like us (Most printing services accept PSDs/TIFF). I sincerely wish why YC companies who generally want to change the world, don't want to create a Photoshop clone/competitor to kill this stupid Adobe that's ruining all of our lives with the stupid CC bundle. 3) The people who really won, like someone else said, were the ones who used pirated versions. I mean, I've paid a total of ~$1400 till now to Adobe and what have I received from Adobe? A 'fuck you' from their CEO in the form of their Creative cloud bundle and a hack that leaked my personal details online making me look like a jack ass to anyone who searches for me by my email. Oh also don't forget the uncounted number of "fuck you's" he's sent me while developing for Flash (on mobile) and Flex. 4) Always create a separate email (or an alias) while signing up for cloud services, so you can eliminate guess work during a crisis. So, instead of signing up with example@gmail.com for Adobe or someone else, use example+adobe@gmail.com (this will redirect to example@gmail.com) or rather create adobe.example@gmail.com or something (gmail is just an example). This way, you can always trace out the right service responsible for the leakage of your details whenever something goes wrong. I was lucky enough that my bank blocked my card on observing a fraudulent transaction initiated from another country and thus issued me with a new card. I have no plans to upgrade from CS6 or to something else for the next few years. Hopefully GIMP will get better by then, or some YC company will create a better Photoshop and let us own it forever for a one-time fee.
acqq 13y ago
The kind of data that probably inspired the comics: http://pastebin.com/9AShpF4B http://pastebin.com/9AShpF4B Note the apparent password hints "Our business unit plus 1" or "usual one." Really crosswordy.
NateDad 13y ago
Yay for LastPass - my password at adobe is a long string of gobbedlygook that is unique to the site. I changed it just in case... which makes me think... Why the hell hasn't Adobe reset everyone's password yet? That would be the FIRST thing I did in that situation. At least prevent the world from being able to log into my own site with the leaked passwords.
- stonemetal 13y ago
  I believe they are trying to make sure the system is secure first. No point in having everyone reset their password if the bad guys still have access to the password db.
kaivi 13y ago
Someone should assemble the leaked hashes and hints into a real, huge browser-based multiplayer crossword. Imagine how awesome would that be.
- phreeza 13y ago
  Given the history of life immitates xkcd, that is probably just a matter of time.
rmc 13y ago
What's the status with figuring out the encryption key and breaking all those passwords? Surely there are known passwords. Is there any distributed brute force attempt that I can help with?
- shawabawa3 13y ago
  1. That's probably illegal so if there was one it wouldn't be publicly advertised 2. If adobe weren't completely stupid (a big if admittedly) it will be infeasible to brute force (>100 bits of entropy)
  - rmc 13y ago
    > it will be infeasible to brute force (>100 bits of entropy) Really? Even a massively distributed attempt?
    - shawabawa3 13y ago
      100 bits of entropy takes around 10^26 seconds to crack [1] Even if you somehow managed to get a botnet of 100 million machines, it would still take longer than the age of the universe to brute force it. Security of 3DES is effectively 112 bits [2] if random keys are used. Although as I said, this is assuming adobe weren't completely stupid (and reused one or more of the keys, or used non-random keys) [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/209/zxcvbn/test/index.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_DES
coldcode 13y ago
I wonder who the chief security officer of Adobe is (should be was) and why they never had sufficient security audits to look at how they did security. Why is it virtually every time there is a leak people did the encryption wrong?

120 points by ohazi 13y ago

Image tooltip text made me laugh: >>It was bound to happen eventually. This data theft will enable almost limitless [xkcd.com/792]-style password reuse attacks in the coming weeks. There's only one group that comes out of this looking smart: Everyone who pirated Photoshop.<< [xkcd.com/792]: http://xkcd.com/792/ http://xkcd.com/792/

RyanZAG 13y ago
He missed a group of people: any designer who did not entrust their entire professional workflow to a single, for-profit company whose best interests are in moving your workflow in ways that benefit the company over the user. Being dependent on something like Photoshop for your only income is a terrible position to be in, yet it is how I'd describe most designers today.
- sz4kerto 13y ago
  That situation cannot be (or should not be) avoided if a product is significantly better that any other competitor on the market. You can choose between - depending on the for-profit company - having disadvantage on the marketplace because of inferior tools I think the former is often preferable.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    FWIW, I think people are doing their careers a great dis-service if they're selling themselves just as "Photoshop Technicians".
- hengheng 13y ago
  Not being able to use CMYK is a terrible perspective if you ever get a chance of printing something.
  - hnha 13y ago
    CMYK is not exclusive to Photoshop, is it?
    - arb99 13y ago
      I guess one of the main competitors to Photoshop is gimp... last time I checked it had bad support for CMYK (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIMP https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CMYK_support_in_The_GIM... )
      - hnha 13y ago
        Gimp is just one free alternative, i guess you knew about its cmyk troubles and posted because of that. Why limit yourself to Gimp though? Check.out other alternatives. I posted some in another comment in this thread.
  - RyanZAG 13y ago
    Possibly a kickstarter to code CMYK into gimp would be a good idea? If the gimp team doesn't let you do it, it should be easy enough to fork it with a bit of financial backing from a kickstarter.
- j2kun 13y ago
  Of course he missed that it's not funny.
p4bl0 13y ago
He forgot users of The Gimp ;-).
- sz4kerto 13y ago
  I don't think they look smart at all ;) /s

sudhirj 13y ago

Anyone care to explain the DES misuse to laypeople? And why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?

padwan 13y ago
That's not salt. "Since DES only encrypts in blocks of 64 bits (8 bytes) then encrypting and keeping the length of blocks means that you actually get a very good idea of the length of the password - that is, anything with only one block is a password length between 1 and 8 characters, with two blocks between 9 and 16 characters etc. In addition a password of "1234567812345678" would encrypt into two identical blocks." http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1286 http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1286
taejo 13y ago
The passwords don't have a salt: that extra block that some of them have is the second block of the password (each block of 8 bytes is encrypted separately).
bazzargh 13y ago
As I understand it, Adobe used ECB mode, which means the blocks are encrypted independently. You can look at the encrypted blocks and see that two different passwords share character sequences. This is I assume what Randall is referring to with the 'crossword' bit - as well as having clues in the hints, solving one password may give you part of another. The suffix may also contain only one or two characters (plus padding) which makes it more plausible to mount a brute force attack. ECB mode is just terrible. As well as these suffix problems, I've seen another example where a company used it to encrypt key-value pair cookies. Of course the keys are always the same...so prefixes were guessable too. And wikipedia has a fantastic example of why its stupid for images: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECB_mode#Electronic_codebook_.28ECB.29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECB_mode#Electronic_codebook_.2...
ohwp 13y ago
"why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?" I'm not sure if this is the case, but sometimes this has to do with 'backwards compatibility'. I've seen databases where some passwords where MD5, some SHA1, some Bcrypt and so on. The login page then will do something like: if(checkBcrypt(password)) { login(); } else if(checkSha1(password) || checkMd5(password)) { updateDbPassword(password); login(); } else { loginError(); }

moomin 13y ago

explainxkcd hasn't worked out the passwords yet.

raws 13y ago

Is there a website out there that will tell you how many times your password has been used based on this database of the 153millions accounts?

bladedtoys 13y ago
To make it searchable on your password, someone would have to go through the Adobe set and use the hints to manually figure out the clear text form. Off hand, it's hard to see how posting that on the web could be done responsibly. But until someone does, you could just Google "most common passwords" and if yours is in the set, you win!
- raws 13y ago
  It is not one of the common ones but I wonder if someone used it and just put it in as a clue which would mean that it's completely compromised...
- tompaton 13y ago
  no, you have known plain text, so you just have to encrypt your password using the same algorithm and then search the database for matching ciphertext, there's no need to find the clear text for any of the passwords.
  - berberous 13y ago
    you can't re-encrypt since we don't have the keys. but you can search for your e-mail, pull up the associated hash, and then search for the hash to see who else used that password, and list all of their password hints.
    - raws 13y ago
      That's what I had in mind... Anyone care to make a website for that?
- sect 13y ago
  A rainbow table would probably be more accurate than a password set that comes up on google.

gberger 13y ago

Where can I download the breached file? I want to see if I'm in there...

raws 13y ago
no need to download it if you just want to check yourself: http://adobe.cynic.al/ http://adobe.cynic.al/ props to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661774
- nodata 13y ago
  "bill@microsoft.com was found. You need to change your passwords now."
  - DanBC 13y ago
    example@example.com nospam@nospam.com nospam@here.com Were all found. I feel sorry for the people paying a lot of money to buy these short domain names, and finding huge amounts of spam being delivered to them because people have misused domain names that don't belong to them.
    - p4bl0 13y ago
      Actually example.com is reserved for test usage and this kind of things. You are right for the two others thought.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        But using example on someone else's website to avoid using your own email address is not using it in documentation. .invalid would be a better choice. I agree that I'm quibbling over probably unimportant details :-) http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved http://www.iana.org/domains/reserved http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606
    - hnha 13y ago

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

What do the boxes on the right represent? St.peter St.peter St.peter1 password password1 password57 seem to be the first few if I understand correctly.

jawr 13y ago
I was thinking that St.peter would have to be peter (NAME1) but then that wouldn't be enough to be it's own block. I'm guessing the split boxes [ ][ ][ ] are characters and the long [\t] are for numbers.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  I think the eight square boxes mean "exactly 8 characters", and the long rectangles mean "up to 8 characters". You can tell them apart (sometimes) because "exactly 8 characters" will match if those 8 characters are re-used by someone else with a longer than 8 character password. And the layout emphasizes the re-use, which is also shown by color coding.
Kiro 13y ago
How did you come up with that?
abraxasz 13y ago
The favorite of the 12 apostles would be Saint John, not Saint Peter[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved
- jawr 13y ago
  That's too many characters, plus "Favourite of 12 Apostles" doesn't mean Jesus', it could be the users. I'm not convinced that it's St. though as when they say name1 that would suggest St. was part of it :p

neya 13y ago

As funny as this comic is, it wasn't so funny when my card was hacked and my personal details were released online. Now anyone who searches for my email (on Google) is displayed a (spammy) link to the dumped file containing my email, along with some jumbled letters, possibly my encrypted password. One super-good thing I did when I signed up for adobe was: I created a separate email address (purely by co-incidence) that I used exclusively for Adobe (and for some spammy services like some deal sites, which didn't require my card). As a result, I know for sure that my card was compromised because of the Adobe's breach and no one else. Lessons and observations: 1) I'm glad I bought the CS6. With the cloud comes great risks too. Not to say that you should avoid cloud products, but when you have a version you can own forever, then you might as well go for it. Imagine if I was on CC and my card was hacked and I decided to stop paying Adobe the next month out of frustration. Do you know what will happen? My company will come to a stand-still because I will no longer have access to Photoshop and a huge portion of my company is basically a Media company. 2) Someone else said we're depending too much on Adobe, and I tend to agree. But there is really no superior equivalent for Adobe's Photoshop at the moment. Please don't cite GIMP - I've tried it and it needs a lot of work to even be on par with Photoshop atm. Another factor is the PSD file format which has painfully spread like a Virus and you can't erase it out of your workflow if you're a Media shop like us (Most printing services accept PSDs/TIFF). I sincerely wish why YC companies who generally want to change the world, don't want to create a Photoshop clone/competitor to kill this stupid Adobe that's ruining all of our lives with the stupid CC bundle. 3) The people who really won, like someone else said, were the ones who used pirated versions. I mean, I've paid a total of ~$1400 till now to Adobe and what have I received from Adobe? A 'fuck you' from their CEO in the form of their Creative cloud bundle and a hack that leaked my personal details online making me look like a jack ass to anyone who searches for me by my email. Oh also don't forget the uncounted number of "fuck you's" he's sent me while developing for Flash (on mobile) and Flex. 4) Always create a separate email (or an alias) while signing up for cloud services, so you can eliminate guess work during a crisis. So, instead of signing up with example@gmail.com for Adobe or someone else, use example+adobe@gmail.com (this will redirect to example@gmail.com) or rather create adobe.example@gmail.com or something (gmail is just an example). This way, you can always trace out the right service responsible for the leakage of your details whenever something goes wrong. I was lucky enough that my bank blocked my card on observing a fraudulent transaction initiated from another country and thus issued me with a new card. I have no plans to upgrade from CS6 or to something else for the next few years. Hopefully GIMP will get better by then, or some YC company will create a better Photoshop and let us own it forever for a one-time fee.

acqq 13y ago

The kind of data that probably inspired the comics: http://pastebin.com/9AShpF4B http://pastebin.com/9AShpF4B Note the apparent password hints "Our business unit plus 1" or "usual one." Really crosswordy.

NateDad 13y ago

Yay for LastPass - my password at adobe is a long string of gobbedlygook that is unique to the site. I changed it just in case... which makes me think... Why the hell hasn't Adobe reset everyone's password yet? That would be the FIRST thing I did in that situation. At least prevent the world from being able to log into my own site with the leaked passwords.

stonemetal 13y ago
I believe they are trying to make sure the system is secure first. No point in having everyone reset their password if the bad guys still have access to the password db.

kaivi 13y ago

Someone should assemble the leaked hashes and hints into a real, huge browser-based multiplayer crossword. Imagine how awesome would that be.

phreeza 13y ago
Given the history of life immitates xkcd, that is probably just a matter of time.

rmc 13y ago

What's the status with figuring out the encryption key and breaking all those passwords? Surely there are known passwords. Is there any distributed brute force attempt that I can help with?

shawabawa3 13y ago
1. That's probably illegal so if there was one it wouldn't be publicly advertised 2. If adobe weren't completely stupid (a big if admittedly) it will be infeasible to brute force (>100 bits of entropy)
- rmc 13y ago
  > it will be infeasible to brute force (>100 bits of entropy) Really? Even a massively distributed attempt?
  - shawabawa3 13y ago
    100 bits of entropy takes around 10^26 seconds to crack [1] Even if you somehow managed to get a botnet of 100 million machines, it would still take longer than the age of the universe to brute force it. Security of 3DES is effectively 112 bits [2] if random keys are used. Although as I said, this is assuming adobe weren't completely stupid (and reused one or more of the keys, or used non-random keys) [1] https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/209/zxcvbn/test/index.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_DES

coldcode 13y ago

I wonder who the chief security officer of Adobe is (should be was) and why they never had sufficient security audits to look at how they did security. Why is it virtually every time there is a leak people did the encryption wrong?