Re: password cracking: one char at a time.

[Chris Largret <largret () gmail com>]

On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 13:26 -0500, michael young wrote:
> Hi all,
>     I was wondering if is at all possible to discover a password one 
> char at a time.
> Normally, you either get the password right or wrong (all or nothing).
> Does anyone know if this can be done? Does it depend on the encryption 
> algorithm
> used to encrypt the password? Is that a difference for 1 and/or 2 way 
> passwords?

Not generally. Perhaps with weak encryption techniques such as adding
the values of two ascii characters together. example:

This is the text to be encrypted.
passwordpasswordpasswordpasswordp

In such a case, it could be possible to learn the password one character
at a time. In most cases, though, a stronger encryption is used and this
isn't possible.

--
Chris Largret <http://daga.dyndns.org>