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What stupidly easy tech solution do people gloss over all of the time? (kbin.melroy.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

220 comments fedilink hide all child comments

For me it's the paranoia surrounding webcams. People outright refuse to own one and I understand, until they go on and on about how they're being spied. Here's the secret - unplug the damn thing when you think you won't use it or haven't used it in a while.

They, whoever it is, can't really spy on you on something that's already off and unplugged!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Which is funny because those strict rules reduce the number of combinations an attacker has to guess from, thereby reducing security.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Provably false. That's only true if the rules specify some really wacky requirements which I haven't seen anywhere except in that one game about making a password.

Think about it this way. If you have a password of maximum length two which only accepts lowercase letters, you have 26 choices for the first character & 26 for the next. Each of the 26 characters in the first spot can be combined with any of the 26 characters in the second spot, so 26 * 26 = 676 possible passwords.

By adding uppercase letters (for a total of 52 characters to choose from), you get 52 * 52 = 2704 possible passwords. It increases significantly if you increase the length beyond two or can have more than just upper & lowercase letters.

Computers have gotten so efficient at generating & validating passwords that you can try tens of thousands of passwords in a minute, exhausting every possible two-letter password in seconds starting with aa and ending with ZZ.

The only way you would decrease the number of possible passwords is if you specified that the character in a particular spot had to be uppercase, but I've never seen a password picker say "your fourth character must be a lowercase letter".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

By adding uppercase letters (for a total of 52 characters to choose from), you get 52 * 52 = 2704 possible passwords.

You don't add them, you enforce at least one. That eliminates all combinations without upper case letters.

So, without this rule you would indeed have the 52x52 possible passwords, but with it you have (52x52)-(26x26) possible passwords (the second bracket is all combinations of 2 lowercase letters), which is obviously less.

The only way you would decrease the number of possible passwords is if you specified that the character in a particular spot had to be uppercase

Wrong. In your example, for any given try, if you have put a lowercase letter in spot 1, you don't need to try any lowercase in spot 2.

Any information you give the attacker eliminates possible combinations.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I think I'm confused on your point.

I interpreted your statement to mean "adding a requirement for certain types of characters will decrease the number of possible passwords compared to no requirements at all", which is false. Even in your example above, with only two letters, no numbers / special characters allowed, requiring a capital letter decreases the possibilities back to the original 676 possible passwords - not less.

Perhaps you're trying to say that passwords should all require certain complexity, but without broadcasting the password requirements publicly? I suppose that's a valid point, but I don't think the tradeoff of time required to make that secure is worth the literal .000001% (I think I did the math right) improvement in security.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Even in your example above, with only two letters, no numbers / special characters allowed, requiring a capital letter decreases the possibilities back to the original 676 possible passwords - not less.

No it doesn't. It reduces the possibilities to less than the 52x52 possibilities that would exist if you allowed all possible combinations of upper and lower case letters.

You are confused because you only see the two options of enforcing or not allowing certain characters. All characters need to be allowed but none should be enforced. That maximizes the number of possible combinations.

that passwords should all require certain complexity, but without broadcasting the password requirements publicly?

No, because that's still the same. An attacker can find out the rules by creating accounts and testing.