Penetration Testing mailing list archives
Re: Secure Password Policy?
From: Neil <neil () voidfx net>
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2006 05:42:30 +0530
On 1/19/2006 3:41 PM, Sulaiman, Wilmar wrote:
Dear all, I noticed that "best practice" for Minimum password length policy is either 6 or 8 characters. I guess SANS institute considered a weak password if it is less than 8 characters. I would like to know where they derived the number (6 and 8 characters). Is there any documentation to backup it up why the best practice for minimum password length is set to 6?
Well, the amount of time it takes to brute force a password goes up exponentially with every additional digit. Suppose we are using alphanumeric passwords, which would give us a possible 36 characters for each digit of the password. (Alphanumeric is what is often touted to normal users in security lectures in my experience.) Let us also suppose that we can attempt 1000 passwords a second (a number which has no basis in fact, but is nice and round). Thus: possible number of passwords = possible number of characters ^ number of characters in password. and: time to crack = number of passwords / number of attempts per second 361 = 36/1000 = 0.036 seconds (which is faster than you can blink) 362 = 1296/1000 = 1.296 seconds 363 = 46656/1000 = 46.656 seconds 364 = 1679616/1000 = 1679.616 seconds (27 minutes) 365 = 60466176/1000 = 60466.176 seconds (16 hours) 366 = 2176782336/1000 = 2176782.336 seconds (25 days) So as you can see, the amount of time really spikes up by adding the number of digits in your password. Mind you, password crackers today are many times faster than the example I did above. So, using a real numbers, security advisories have decided that at 8 characters, it will take someone quite some time to crack the password. (And I just don't recommend 6 characters, too trivial in today's day and age.) -- Neil. http://voidfx.net "Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to try to change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people I had to kill because they pissed me off." --Anonymous ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Audit your website security with Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner: Hackers are concentrating their efforts on attacking applications on your website. Up to 75% of cyber attacks are launched on shopping carts, forms, login pages, dynamic content etc. Firewalls, SSL and locked-down servers are futile against web application hacking. Check your website for vulnerabilities to SQL injection, Cross site scripting and other web attacks before hackers do! Download Trial at: http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/pen-test_050831 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- Re: Secure Password Policy? Tim (Jan 21)
- Re: Secure Password Policy? Neil (Jan 20)
- Re: Secure Password Policy? David M. Zendzian (Jan 22)
- Re: Secure Password Policy? Brian Anderson (Jan 22)
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