Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely!
From: "Pavel Kankovsky" <peak () argo troja mff cuni cz>
Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:21:07 +0200 (CEST)
On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Frank Knobbe wrote:
It's a nice recommendation of MS to make (to use long passphrases instead of passwords). But I don't consider 14 chars a "passphrase". Perhaps they should enable more/all password components to handle much longer passwords/phrases.
A passphrase consisting of 7 words and 12 bits of entropy per a word is as guessable as a password with 14 characters and 6 bits of entropy per a character. You get 84 bits of total entropy in both cases. The only advantage of passphrases is that lusers might find long random sequences of words easier to remember than long random sequences of characters. (But wait: 12 bits of entropy per a word--this is equivalent to a uniform choice of one word out of 4096. 4 thousand? That might exceed an average luser's vocabulary by an order of magnitude! ;>) --Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak [ Boycott Microsoft--http://www.vcnet.com/bms ] "Resistance is futile. Open your source code and prepare for assimilation." _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely!, (continued)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Tim (Oct 16)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Micheal Espinola Jr (Oct 16)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Tim (Oct 16)
- RE: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! joe (Oct 18)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Eric Paynter (Oct 18)
- RE: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! joe (Oct 21)
- Websphere 3.5 Alerta Redsegura (Oct 21)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Exibar (Oct 21)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Micheal Espinola Jr (Oct 16)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Tim (Oct 16)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Frank Knobbe (Oct 16)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Pavel Kankovsky (Oct 19)
- RE: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! RandallM (Oct 16)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Danny (Oct 20)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Maarten (Oct 20)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Georgi Guninski (Oct 21)
- Re: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Danny (Oct 21)
- RE: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely! Frank Knobbe (Oct 19)