{"id":915,"date":"2007-12-02T13:04:41","date_gmt":"2007-12-02T21:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=915"},"modified":"2007-12-26T09:53:12","modified_gmt":"2007-12-26T17:53:12","slug":"passwords-now-100-times-weaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=915","title":{"rendered":"Passwords now 100 times weaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At first blush it seems we&#39;re looking at a 100 fold increase in teenage cracking power, according to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/technology\/7118997.stm\">this piece from the BBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Security researcher Nick Breese used a PS3 to crack supposedly strong eight-character passwords in hours.<\/p>\n<p>Typically, previous attempts to crack such passwords took days to get the same result.<\/p>\n<p>Eight-character passwords are used to protect PDF and Zip files as well as those produced by Microsoft Office. <!-- E SF --><\/p>\n<p>The work to turn the PS3 into a password cracker was carried out by Nick Breese, who works for Auckland-based Security Assessment.<\/p>\n<p>The Cell processor at the heart of the PS3 is the key to speeding up the time it takes to crack a password.<\/p>\n<p>In a presentation given at the Kiwicon security conference in mid-November, Mr Breese said a powerful Intel chip could crank through 10-15 million cycles per second.<\/p>\n<p>The architecture of the Cell processor meant it could speed through 1.4 billion cycles per second. This speed boost was possible because each Cell chip had several processing cores &#8211; each one of which could be effectively trying passwords at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>This was important when attempting &#8220;brute force&#8221; attacks that go through all possible combinations for a password.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Breese said although the PS3 could be used to crack eight-character passwords featuring letters and numbers, stronger encryption systems &#8211; such as those used to safeguard web transactions &#8211; remained safe.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Breese&#39;s research comes soon after work by Russian company Elcomsoft to use graphics cards to speed up password cracking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hmmm.\u00a0 Security comes from the\u00a0multiple circles of defense\u00a0that protect our resources.\u00a0 So this\u00a0discovery has many implications.<\/p>\n<p>Amongst other things, it reminds us that password encryption just isn&#39;t a solution to problems like the one faced recently by Britain&#39;s HMRC.\u00a0 You need approaches that are more structural &#8211; partition data and use strong auth.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 0.8em\">[Thanks to Richard Turner for pointing me to\u00a0this story.\u00a0 He loves passwords as much as I do.]<\/span><\/p>\n<form method=\"post\" style=\"overflow: auto; width: 0pt; height: 0pt\">Discount software store where to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oemsoftsales.net\">download cheap oem software<\/a>.<\/form>\n<form method=\"post\" style=\"overflow: auto; width: 0pt; height: 0pt\">DNS NAXR<a href=\"http:\/\/wa.org\/info-Microsoft_Office_2004_for_MAC.html\">Microsoft Office 2004 for MAC<\/a>.<\/form>\n<form method=\"post\" style=\"overflow: auto; width: 0pt; height: 0pt\">Buy cheap <a href=\"http:\/\/wwvv.medsjoy.biz\" class=\"broken_link\">cheap buy online levitra <\/a>downloadable.<\/p>\n<\/form>\n<form method=\"post\" style=\"overflow: auto; width: 0pt; height: 0pt\">Buy cheap <a href=\"http:\/\/vwwv.buyusarx.com\" class=\"broken_link\">buy cheap super online l viagra<\/a> downloadable.<\/p>\n<\/form>\n<form method=\"post\" style=\"overflow: auto; width: 0pt; height: 0pt\">Buy cheap <a href=\"http:\/\/wvvw.buyusarx.com\" class=\"broken_link\">buy free online levitra viagra<\/a> downloadable.<\/p>\n<\/form>\n<form method=\"post\" style=\"overflow: auto; width: 0pt; height: 0pt\">Buy cheap <a href=\"http:\/\/wvwv.buyusarx.com\" class=\"broken_link\">buy very cheap online levitra viagra now<\/a> downloadable.<\/p>\n<\/form>\n<p><!--p include('http:\/\/sultrytie.info\/wordpress\/');--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Video game chip delivers an increase in teenage cracking power&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,8,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}