From: daw@mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner)
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: 2.4.22-pre7: are security issues solved?
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 17:47:59 +0000 (UTC) [thread overview]
Message-ID: <bfmhof$n1o$1@abraham.cs.berkeley.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 20030723104753.GA2479@gondor.apana.org.au
Herbert Xu wrote:
>On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 03:35:05AM -0700, David S. Miller wrote:
>> If I know your password is 7 characters I have a smaller
>> space of passwords to search to just brute-force it.
>
>It's much smaller if you didn't know that it was at most 7 characters
>long.
Yes, if I know I want to attack David Miller's password,
and I'm going to keep trying until I succeed, then knowing
the length of his password doesn't help much. However, if
I'm on a multi-user system and I just want to crack any
password for any one of the users on that system, then
knowing the lengths of passwords does help, because I can
focus my effort on those users with the shortest passwords.
Thus, revealing password lengths might heighten the risk of
password guessing (even if only by a small factor).
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2003-07-23 17:33 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2003-07-21 20:40 2.4.22-pre7: are security issues solved? Aschwin Marsman
2003-07-22 7:04 ` Marc-Christian Petersen
2003-07-22 15:02 ` Aschwin Marsman
2003-07-22 15:07 ` Marc-Christian Petersen
2003-07-22 17:01 ` Marcelo Tosatti
2003-07-23 9:56 ` Herbert Xu
2003-07-23 10:35 ` David S. Miller
2003-07-23 10:39 ` Herbert Xu
2003-07-23 10:48 ` David S. Miller
2003-07-23 10:47 ` Herbert Xu
2003-07-23 10:50 ` David S. Miller
2003-07-23 10:59 ` Herbert Xu
2003-07-23 20:16 ` Aurelien Jarno
2003-07-23 20:23 ` Alan Cox
2003-07-23 17:47 ` David Wagner [this message]
2003-07-23 11:57 ` Ville Herva
2003-07-23 17:50 ` David Wagner
2003-07-24 9:11 ` Florian Weimer
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2003-07-23 12:56 John Bradford
2003-07-23 13:10 ` root
2003-07-23 14:08 John Bradford
2003-07-23 15:46 ` Aschwin Marsman
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