DZone
Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile
  • Manage Email Subscriptions
  • How to Post to DZone
  • Article Submission Guidelines
Sign Out View Profile
  • Post an Article
  • Manage My Drafts
Over 2 million developers have joined DZone.
Log In / Join
Refcards Trend Reports Events Over 2 million developers have joined DZone. Join Today! Thanks for visiting DZone today,
Edit Profile Manage Email Subscriptions Moderation Admin Console How to Post to DZone Article Submission Guidelines
View Profile
Sign Out
Refcards
Trend Reports
Events
Zones
Culture and Methodologies Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations
Culture and Methodologies
Agile Career Development Methodologies Team Management
Data Engineering
AI/ML Big Data Data Databases IoT
Software Design and Architecture
Cloud Architecture Containers Integration Microservices Performance Security
Coding
Frameworks Java JavaScript Languages Tools
Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance
Deployment DevOps and CI/CD Maintenance Monitoring and Observability Testing, Tools, and Frameworks
Partner Zones
AWS Cloud
by AWS Developer Relations

Trending

  • Logging Best Practices Revisited [Video]
  • Effortlessly Streamlining Test-Driven Development and CI Testing for Kafka Developers
  • What Is Test Pyramid: Getting Started With Test Automation Pyramid
  • A Complete Guide to AWS File Handling and How It Is Revolutionizing Cloud Storage

I Can Probably Hack Your Password in MINUTES!

An experienced software developer can probably hack most passwords in use on the planet in minutes. Read how current password strategy is fundamentally flawed.

Thomas Hansen user avatar by
Thomas Hansen
CORE ·
Mar. 06, 22 · Tutorial
Like (6)
Save
Tweet
Share
18.85K Views

Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.

Join For Free

The average password is easily hacked in minutes by an experienced software developer. This is because of a fundamental flaw in how we were taught to create our passwords. An example of a bad password is for instance; "qWxc4&Gh". On the surface, such passwords seem to be impossible to hack, but such a password can actually easily be hacked in 39 minutes by an experienced hacker by simply "guessing", using a technique referred to as brute force, where a computer tries all combinations of characters one after the other. The reason is because of something we refer to as "entropy" in computer programming and cryptography. There are simply not enough possible combinations in short passwords such as the above to be "random enough" to prevent a computer from guessing it by trying all combinations of characters one after the other. Below is a list is taken from Hive Systems illustrating the problem.

In addition to that such passwords are easily guessed, they're also extremely difficult to remember, resulting in users having to write down their passwords somewhere to be able to remember them. The only real alternative to writing down your passwords seems to be to use the same password on multiple sites, over and over again. Since few websites and software systems (correctly) implement password hashing using BlowFish and per record-based salts, this results in that if a malicious hacker manages to hack one website you've registered with, he can typically reuse your password from that one website on all websites you've registered. This of course results in that if you choose to register with a password at "The Free Ponies and Barbies for your Daughter" website, a hacker capable of hacking "the free pony site" might end up having your password for your online internet bank. If you're a software developer reading this and you're telling me "but I'm hashing my passwords" then I've got three words for you:

Rainbow Dictionary Attack

Search for it and weep!

The Solution

If you create a password consisting of 8 characters you end up with an entropy of 72 to the power of 8. This is because your base number is 72. This is a ridiculously high number for humans, but for a computer, it is actually quite easily traversed using brute force. If you instead choose to create your passwords as sentences, you end up with a base number of 470,000 if you're exclusively using English words. This is because of that the English language contains 470,000 different words. Hence a sentence with 8 words becomes 470,000 to the power of 8, which of course becomes such a ridiculously high number that if you used every single computer on earth to try to guess such a password, you'd still need a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion years (or something). Then add to the above entropy by realizing there exists hundreds of actively used languages on the planet, and thousands of dialects, further adding to the entropy of your passwords. Below is an example of a password that is literally 100% perfectly impossible to guess using brute force.

This is actually a very secure password dude!

The above password contains 8 words, implying 470,000 to the power of 8 different combinations required to guess it, while at the same time the password is also easily remembered. The only drawback with the above password is that it requires slightly more time to write, which can be a little bit inconvenient, especially if you're logging in with your phone. However, once you've logged in the first time, typically your phone will offer to remember your password, implying you'll only need to type it once. So even though the above password seems to be unsafe for a human being, it's probably a trillion, trillion, trillion times more secure than the 8 character password we started out with initially.

The facts are that the way we were taught to construct our passwords is quite counterintuitively a very, very, very bad password strategy. It's much smarter to use entire sentences, and add some dialect, and/or words from your native tongue. This makes your passwords easily remembered and very difficult to guess. For added benefit you can create passwords that are easily visualized, creating imagery in your head, such as the following which is easily remembered due to the image it creates but still not an easily guessed sentence.

I like the smell of sunshine on a Sunday

The poetic imagery of something such as the above makes the above password extremely easy to remember, since it creates "images", allowing you to more easily create associations, strengthening your ability to remember it. While at the same time rendering your passwords 100% impossible to guess using any known techniques as of today. This is why we don't require any special characters, a combination of upper case and lower case characters, and/or numbers as you setup Magic and it asks you for a root password, simply because we want to encourage users to use sentences as passwords to increase entropy and strengthen the security of their Magic servers. And yes, before you ask, we (obviously) use BlowFish and per record-based salts as we store your passwords into Magic's database ...

For the record, I have never attempted to maliciously break into any computer systems on the planet, neither to steal your password nor for any other (malicious) reasons. So even though I can hack your password, rest assured I personally never would ... ;)

Hack (falconry)

Published at DZone with permission of Thomas Hansen. See the original article here.

Opinions expressed by DZone contributors are their own.

Trending

  • Logging Best Practices Revisited [Video]
  • Effortlessly Streamlining Test-Driven Development and CI Testing for Kafka Developers
  • What Is Test Pyramid: Getting Started With Test Automation Pyramid
  • A Complete Guide to AWS File Handling and How It Is Revolutionizing Cloud Storage

Comments

Partner Resources

X

ABOUT US

  • About DZone
  • Send feedback
  • Careers
  • Sitemap

ADVERTISE

  • Advertise with DZone

CONTRIBUTE ON DZONE

  • Article Submission Guidelines
  • Become a Contributor
  • Visit the Writers' Zone

LEGAL

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • 600 Park Offices Drive
  • Suite 300
  • Durham, NC 27709
  • support@dzone.com

Let's be friends: