[Novalug] forgotten passwords

[Igor Birman]

Not bad, but here is something to think about..

Ok, so let's just say I got a copy of everything on Gutenberg.net (5 billion..ish words).  Tried every word forwards and backwards (10 billion)..  Tried a thousand different combinations of zeros for Os, 3 for e, etc (10 trillion)..

Computers run at a couple Ghz these days - that is a couple Billion operations per second per core.  A really efficient assembly routine to test passwords might be able to process a password in a thousand clock cycles, so a few million passwords per second.  So I could maybe test a billion passwords in 10 minutes or so...  a trillion in about a week, ten trillion in 10 weeks.  Now, put together a small cluster of hexacore processor machines, I could crack your password in a day, no sweat..

Igor



________________________________
From: Bonnie Dalzell <bdalzell at qis.net>
To: greg pryzby <greg at pryzby.org>
Cc: Novalug <novalug at calypso.tux.org>
Sent: Mon, March 15, 2010 10:48:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Novalug] forgotten passwords

On Mon, 15 Mar 2010, greg pryzby wrote:

> not sure what is going on, but I forgot a few passwords over the weekend....
>
> someone else had admin and could reset one of them,
>
> the other is an luks encrypted partition. i think that data is lost (ok as
> it is an extra computer w/ just copies).
>
> that said, if anyone has ideas on how to crack LUKS, let me know and we can
> try ;)
>
> any ideas for a way to save passwords? I never write them down so I am
> interested in a new system.

How about this one :-)

1. pick a book that you will keep
2. count the number of pages in for your month of birth
3. count the number of lines down on that page for your day of birth
4. count the number of letters in for the last two digits of your year of 
birth.

pick the next 10 letters on that line.
spell the set of letters backwards
substitute zeros for the o's
substitute Z for the letter s
substitute 3 for the letter e

turn the corner down on that page

you may want to write down the name of the site this is a password for at 
the top of the page. do not circle the set of letters you picked however

don't throw away the book

next time you need a password go to the next page and repeat steps 3 and 
4.


>
>
>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
                        Bonnie Dalzell, MA
mail:5100 Hydes Rd PO Box 60, Hydes,MD,USA 21082-0060|EMAIL:bdalzell at qis.net
Freelance anatomist, vertebrate paleontologist, writer, illustrator, dog
breeder, computer nerd & iconoclast... Borzoi info at www.borzois.com.
HOME www.batw.net    ART bdalzellart.batw.net  BUSINESS www.boardingatwedge.com

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