microrobert
05-28-2013, 06:24 PM
Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like “qeadzcwrsfxv1331”
For Ars, three crackers have at 16,000+ hashed passcodes—with 90 percent success.
In March, readers followed along as Nate Anderson (http://arstechnica.com/author/nate-anderson/), Ars deputy editor and a self-admitted newbie to password cracking, downloaded a list of more than 16,000 cryptographically hashed passcodes. Within a few hours, he deciphered almost half of them (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/how-i-became-a-password-cracker/). The moral of the story: if a reporter with zero training in the ancient art of password cracking can achieve such results, imagine what more seasoned attackers can do.
Imagine no more. We asked three cracking experts to attack the same list Anderson targeted and recount the results in all their color and technical detail Iron Chef (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Chef) style. The results, to say the least, were eye opening because they show how quickly even long passwords with letters, numbers, and symbols can be discovered.
Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like ?qeadzcwrsfxv1331? | Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/)
For Ars, three crackers have at 16,000+ hashed passcodes—with 90 percent success.
In March, readers followed along as Nate Anderson (http://arstechnica.com/author/nate-anderson/), Ars deputy editor and a self-admitted newbie to password cracking, downloaded a list of more than 16,000 cryptographically hashed passcodes. Within a few hours, he deciphered almost half of them (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/03/how-i-became-a-password-cracker/). The moral of the story: if a reporter with zero training in the ancient art of password cracking can achieve such results, imagine what more seasoned attackers can do.
Imagine no more. We asked three cracking experts to attack the same list Anderson targeted and recount the results in all their color and technical detail Iron Chef (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Chef) style. The results, to say the least, were eye opening because they show how quickly even long passwords with letters, numbers, and symbols can be discovered.
Anatomy of a hack: How crackers ransack passwords like ?qeadzcwrsfxv1331? | Ars Technica (http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/)