this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
70 points (97.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27391 readers
1213 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Context is that I had to register for a lot of accounts recently and some of the rules really make no sense.

Not name-and-shaming, but the best one I've seen recently is I might have accidentally performed an XSS attack on a career portal using a 40-digit randomly generated password...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The most basic rules commonly required everywhere. When you have such specific rules, it ironically actually makes finding the password through brute force easier because you can eliminate a bunch of variables that could have existed without all the rules. I can eliminate any permutation under 8 characters, doesn't contain a number, and doesn't contain a special character.

It will still possibly take a billion years to guess, but it could have been two billion without the rules.

Of course, I also find it wild that the metric for how good an encryption or password system is, is just how long it would take to guess every possible combination of input it could be, sequentially. It doesn't account for a brute force attempt that just selects random inputs. It could take until the heat death of the universe... It could take 3 seconds. It's up to chance at that point. Not to mention all the easier ways of getting a password. Like gaslighting the person who knows it into giving it up.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

It's something like the second law of Thermodynamics. It's probability, not absolute. It's possible all the gas molecules in the room arrange themselves one corner, but it's fantastically unlikely. It's possible to choose the right encryption key to a 256-bit cipher at random the first time, but it's fantastically unlikely.