Why aren't alt characters feasible alt255 is an easy one for anyone to remember
and if the policy for passwords dictates the requirement then most large firms
would accept this especially if it made the password in the current view
untouchable for the for seable future
-----Original Message-----
From: Craig Wright <cwright@bdosyd.com.au>
To: Bryan McAninch <BMcAninch@PENSON.COM>; pen-test@securityfocus.com
<pen-test@securityfocus.com>
CC: pand0ra.usa@gmail.com <pand0ra.usa@gmail.com>
Sent: Tue Sep 20 02:01:34 2005
Subject: RE: Whitespace in passwords
Precomputed tables - all lanman fits into 64Gb - time to post about a week
Complete tables - all NTLM MD5 etc should fit to about 2.5 Gb - there are
external usb drive packs larger than this
Re the 1024-bit RSA keypair - there is some good work being done using
quadratic methods
The point is that anyone can download a "14 character all lowercase passphrase
with numbers" precomputed database and crack all of these in milliseconds with
an old P3
The "14 character all lowercase passphrase with numbers" set is only 3gb and it
took me a week to generate - without dedicating the hosts - see lm
configuration #5 at http://www.antsight.com/zsl/rainbowcrack/
Go further lm #6 and I quote from the page "This charset includes all possbile
characters on a standard keyboard (not including those alt+xxx characters)"
As previously stated - with standard users (ie any large firm) alt+xxx chars
are NOT feasible
Regards
Craig
PS
Some reading for those (like me) that enjoy maths re the RSA keys
Biehl and J. Buchmann, An analysis of the reduction algorithm for binary
quadratic forms, <i>Voronoi's Impact on Modern Science</i> (Kyiv, Ukriaine) (P.
Engel and H. Syta, eds.), Vol. 1, Institute of Mathematics of National Academy
of Sciences (1999).
Dan Boneh , Matthew K. Franklin, Identity-Based Encryption from the Weil
Pairing, Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Cryptology Conference on
Advances in Cryptology, p.213-229, August 19-23, 2001
D.A. Cox, <i>Primes of the form x<sup>2</sup> + ny<sup>2</sup></i>, John Wiley
& Sons, New York (1989).
Damian Weber , Thomas F. Denny, The Solution of McCurley's Discrete Log
Challenge, Proceedings of the 18th Annual International Cryptology Conference
on Advances in Cryptology, p.458-471, August 23-27, 1998
-----Original Message-----
From: Bryan McAninch [mailto:BMcAninch@PENSON.COM]
Sent: 20 September 2005 3:21
To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
Cc: pand0ra.usa@gmail.com
Subject: RE: Whitespace in passwords
As I understand it, the central limit theorem states that a randomized brute
force attempt only takes x^y/x or x^(y-1) operations to crack a given keyspace,
where x is the base (number of valid characters), y is the exponentiation
variable (length) and x^y is the keyspace (total combinations).
For example (pardon the formatting):
60^7/60 = 2799360000000/60 = 46656000000 -> 60^(7-1) = 60^6
= 46656000000 operations
86^7/86 = 34792782221696/86 = 404567235136 -> 86^(7-1) = 86^6
= 404567235136 operations
62^8/62 = 218340105584896/62 = 3521614606208 -> 62^(8-1) = 62^7
= 3521614606208 operations
86^8/86 = 2992179271065856/86 = 34792782221696 -> 86^(8-1) = 86^7
= 34792782221696 operations
36^14/36 = 6140942214464815497216/36 = 170581728179578208256 -> 36^(14-1)=
36^13 = 170581728179578208256 operations
This is why public key authentication is recommended over passwords
authentication. Given a mere 1024-bit key, it would theoretically take 2^1023
operations to crack the key:
2^1024 = (1.797693134862315907729305190789 * 10^308)/2 =
8.9884656743115795386465259539451 * 10^307 -> 10^1023 =
8.9884656743115795386465259539451 * 10^307
Taking the 36^14 password above and comparing it to a 1024-bit RSA keypair, you
have the follwing difference:
(2^1023) - (36^13) = (8.9884656743115795386465259539451 * 10^307) -
(170581728179578208256) = 8.9884656743115795386465259539451e * 10^307 more
operations with a 1024-bit RSA keypair, quite a difference! :)
Cheers,
Bryan
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim [mailto:pand0ra.usa@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 01:01 PM
To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Whitespace in passwords
It all about the math. Let's write it out, say you have a machine that runs
3,000,000 combinations per second (about a 1.6 GHz machine). In this example we
will use the Windows LanMan Challange/Response (which is bad to begin with, but
the main key in this is that it does not use a salt).
60 possible characters and the password is 7 characters long.(no spaces)
60^7 = 2,799,360,000,000 = 10.8 days (A-Z, 0-9, special)
86 possible characters and the password is 7 characters long.(no spaces)
86^7 = 34,792,782,221,696 = 134.23 days (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, special)
62 possible characters and the password is 8 characters long.(no spaces)
62^8 = 218,340,105,584,896 = 2.3 years (A-Z, 0-9, special)
86 possible characters and the password is 8 characters long.(no spaces)
86^8 = 2992179271065856 = 31.62 years (A-Z, a-z, 0-9, special)
36 possible characters and the password is 14 characters long. (no spaces)
36^14 = 6,140,942,214,464,815,497,216 combinations = 64,909,333 years (a-z,
0-9) 2bigbrown1dogs (throw some special characters in) We have 2 big brown
dogs! (25 characters using numbers, upper and lower, and special cahracters,
you do the math). Microsoft Windows supports up to ~250 characters for the
passwords/phrases.
The point here is that a 14 character all lowercase passphrase with numbers is
millions of time more difficult that a 'strong' 8 character password with all
sorts of characters. A space is just another character and don't believe that
it will protect you from getting your password cracked (security through
obsecurity?). Also, keep in mind that if you use a algo that has a salt and
supports many characters you will be much better off. Instead of making things
more complex for your users (which also increses the risk of them posting their
password on a stick-it note) make the passphrase easy for them to remember.
Side note: Disable LanMan on all Windows machines if you are not running any
Windows 95/98/ME machines. It is there for backward compatability and is still
enabled by default on Windows 2003 Servers.
On 9/11/05, dave kleiman <dave@isecureu.com> wrote:
They also do not have a lot of the Extended ASCII characters:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/88/312263
Dave
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve.Cummings@barclayscapital.com
[mailto:Steve.Cummings@barclayscapital.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 12:54
To: AMeyers@msolgroup.com; Anders.Thulin@tietoenator.com;
homegrown@bryanallott.net; pen-test@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Whitespace in passwords
Alt characters are also pretty cool
Try alt 255 this is blank space
-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Meyers <AMeyers@msolgroup.com>
To: Anders Thulin <Anders.Thulin@tietoenator.com>; bryan allott
<homegrown@bryanallott.net>; pen-test@securityfocus.com
<pen-test@securityfocus.com>
Sent: Thu Sep 08 01:40:34 2005
Subject: RE: Whitespace in passwords
I like pass phrases better because crackers like john and l0pht, by
default, don't have white spaces in their list of characters.
-------------------
Andrew Meyers
Systems Engineer
Managed Solution
Email: ameyers@mssandiego.com
Phone: 619-220-0544 x115
Fax: 619-220-0599
http://www.mssandiego.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Anders Thulin [mailto:Anders.Thulin@tietoenator.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 3:17 AM
To: bryan allott; pen-test@securityfocus.com
Subject: RE: Whitespace in passwords
From: bryan allott [mailto:homegrown@bryanallott.net]
to the misnomer "passWORD" rather than passPHRASE but it seems
that [most?] people choose passes that dont contain whitespaces,
Most people still stick to alphanumeric passwords, and most of
those are passwords where the digits are placed at the end.
Whitespace is probably not more special than any of the other
'specials' that appear on a standard keyboard. A problem is to know
just what those are -- a look at a keyboard may lead a user to think
the 'x' on the keypad is a different special character than the '*'.
my main question, re security, is wether the whitespace made the
password too vulnerable? [historically] and why this constraint is
introduced in many systems..
Tradition, probably. In environments where users are given fixed
passwords that they can't change themselves, space belongs together
with S58, O0, and Il1 to the characters that probably will be
misunderstood, and so cause calls to helpdesk.
Anything that is likely to cause a help-desk call is a no-no in
large environments.
Another aspect is regularity of user interface design:
should space be treated as significant when it appears first and
last in a string in general, say a Search field in a text editor or
a From- field in an e-mail program? If not, spaces first and last in
passwords will be assumed to be insignificant as well -- and so
become another source for helpdesk complaints.
Regularity pays off.
[but then, if
myth- why propogate it?]
Probably also a case that password are seldom documented in
detail, and few people are willing to sit down to find out details
by experiment.
(Windows NT hashes use the OEM character set ... which is another
source of documentation problems.) So instructions for password
construction tend to avoid mentioning characters that might be
troublesome, even though there are some important things to know.
For instance, dead accent keys (on my kbd ^ is one) usually don't
change the base character in a password, so 'pass' and 'pâss' may
produce the same password hash.
The most useful character to have in a reasonably modern Windows
password is EUR (Alt-Gr E on my kbd.) I suspect the reason why is
well known -- if not, I'll leave it as an exercize. I'm sure there
are similar 'oddities' on other password situations.
i'm thinking that whitespaces [if yr system can handle them, and
why not?] would add another measure of complexity in cracking
pwds?
Of course they do. But ... if you alredy have an adequate
password protection -- say, accounts are locked out after 25 failed
attempts per day regardless of source -- the extra complexity
doesn't add much protection. (If you have the password hashes,
security has already failed, and any attempt to add a last line of
defense in the form of password complexity is misguided: it's only a
question of time before the passwords are discovered, and that time
should not be left to users to ensure.)
Anders Thulin anders.thulin@tietoenator.com 040-661 50 63
TietoEnator Telecom & Media AB, Box 85, SE-201 20 Malmö
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