Improvements in cracking passwords or encrypted data will continue to push the envelope - limited only by processing power, memory and creativity.
"NEW METHOD CRACKS PASSWORDS IN SECONDS
A senior research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's Cryptography and Security Laboratory has published a paper outlining a way to speed up the process of cracking alphanumeric Windows passwords to only 13.6 seconds on average. The previous average time was 1 minute, 41 seconds. The new method uses massive lookup tables to match encoded passwords to the original text entered by a person, thus reducing the time it takes to break the code. 'Windows passwords are not very good,' says researcher Phillippe Oechslin. 'The problem with Windows passwords is that they do not include any random information.' The only requirement for the cracker is a large amount of memory in order to accommodate the lookup tables. The larger the table, the shorter the time it takes to crack the password. Users can protect themselves by adding nonalphanumeric characters to a password, which adds another layer of complexity to the process. Any cracker would then need more time or more memory or both to accomplish the break-in. For more information on Oechslin's method, check out {{the post inserted below}} (CNet News.com 22 Jul 2003) "
Source: NewsScan Daily: July 23, 2003
LASEC: Search Results
Making a Faster Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off
Philippe Oechslin
Published:
To appear in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Proceedings of Crypto'03)
Abstract:
In 1980 Martin Hellman described a cryptanalytic time-memory trade-off which reduces the time of cryptanalysis by using precalculated data stored in memory. This technique was improved by Rivest before 1982 with the introduction of distinguished points which drastically reduces the number of memory lookups during cryptanalysis. This improved technique has been studied extensively but no new optimisations have been published ever since. We propose a new way of precalculating the data which reduces by two the number of calculations needed during cryptanalysis. Moreover, since the method does not make use of distinguished points, it reduces the overhead due to the variable chain length, which again significantly reduces the number of calculations. As an example we have implemented an attack on MS-Windows password hashes. Using 1.4GB of data (two CD-ROMs) we can crack 99.9% of all alphanumerical passwords hashes (2 37 ) in 13.6 seconds whereas it takes 101 seconds with the current approach using distinguished points. We show that the gain could be even much higher depending on the param-eters used.
"NEW METHOD CRACKS PASSWORDS IN SECONDS
A senior research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology's Cryptography and Security Laboratory has published a paper outlining a way to speed up the process of cracking alphanumeric Windows passwords to only 13.6 seconds on average. The previous average time was 1 minute, 41 seconds. The new method uses massive lookup tables to match encoded passwords to the original text entered by a person, thus reducing the time it takes to break the code. 'Windows passwords are not very good,' says researcher Phillippe Oechslin. 'The problem with Windows passwords is that they do not include any random information.' The only requirement for the cracker is a large amount of memory in order to accommodate the lookup tables. The larger the table, the shorter the time it takes to crack the password. Users can protect themselves by adding nonalphanumeric characters to a password, which adds another layer of complexity to the process. Any cracker would then need more time or more memory or both to accomplish the break-in. For more information on Oechslin's method, check out {{the post inserted below}} (CNet News.com 22 Jul 2003) "
Source: NewsScan Daily: July 23, 2003
LASEC: Search Results
Making a Faster Cryptanalytic Time-Memory Trade-Off
Philippe Oechslin
Published:
To appear in Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Proceedings of Crypto'03)
Abstract:
In 1980 Martin Hellman described a cryptanalytic time-memory trade-off which reduces the time of cryptanalysis by using precalculated data stored in memory. This technique was improved by Rivest before 1982 with the introduction of distinguished points which drastically reduces the number of memory lookups during cryptanalysis. This improved technique has been studied extensively but no new optimisations have been published ever since. We propose a new way of precalculating the data which reduces by two the number of calculations needed during cryptanalysis. Moreover, since the method does not make use of distinguished points, it reduces the overhead due to the variable chain length, which again significantly reduces the number of calculations. As an example we have implemented an attack on MS-Windows password hashes. Using 1.4GB of data (two CD-ROMs) we can crack 99.9% of all alphanumerical passwords hashes (2 37 ) in 13.6 seconds whereas it takes 101 seconds with the current approach using distinguished points. We show that the gain could be even much higher depending on the param-eters used.