PaulDotCom mailing list archives

Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done?

From: vlape at me.com (Vincent Lape)
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:44:35 -0700

I think this has already been done. If memory serves me correctly  
Steve Gibson talked about it on Security Now.
On Jul 29, 2009, at 4:40 PM, Adrian Crenshaw wrote:

I'm sure by now the many of you here have heard of the asshatery  
that is zero for 0wned (zf05.txt) and it's started me thinking about  
password management across websites.

Remembering a unique password for each and every site is hard to  
manage. Now, what I currently do is have one password for finance  
stuff, another for website related stuff and yet another for forums  
I've visited, sort of by level of how much I care if they get  
compromised. Still, it's a pain to go around changing passwords when  
you hear Binrev or Hak5 got hacked and your not sure if they got  
your credintials.

I was wondering if this schem is workable from a security  
standpoint, and if someone has already implemented it into a Firefox  
plugin. Lets say you do this, take a password you use everywhere,  
conatinate it with the domain name of the site you are making a  
password for, then take the md5 hash and use it as your password.For  
example, if my password was "mypassword" and I were using it on  
Pauldotcom.com:


md5("mypasswordpauldotcom.com") = "4b7958e4302cae2836f1c05532f835f4"

This way, it's still easy to remeber, but even if an attacker gets  
the plain text from what is store on the site  
(4b7958e4302cae2836f1c05532f835f4 in this case), they can't use it  
to compromise account on other sites since your password would be  
different, for example:

md5("mypasswordirongeek.com") = "1c96d14e6e048924cabf3009b064958f"

Do you see any major weaknesses in this scheme? Anyone know how to  
implement a Firefox plugin to simplify it?

Thanks,
Adrian
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Current thread:

Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? Adrian Crenshaw (Jul 29)
- Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? Vincent Lape (Jul 29)
  - Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? iamnowonmai (Jul 29)
    - Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? Chris Biettchert (Jul 29)
    - Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? Adrian Crenshaw (Jul 30)
    - Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? Jim Halfpenny (Jul 30)
    - Password scheme for websites: How wll would this work, and has it already been done? Shawn Bernard (Jul 30)