Cracked Ashley Madison passwords are on the way despite using bcrypt

Khannie

Seems they had a sh*tty implementation of their hashing which has allowed cracking of ~11 million so far. Always interesting to see a new set of passwords leaked.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/ashley-madison-password-crack-could-spell-trouble-across-the-internet/

The other thing this shows me is that there is some top notch security research going on at the moment. That's a really good catch. I had seen another lad take a lash at them with a defunct bitcoin mining rig and he was getting ~30 tries per second if memory serves.

syklops

Thats a very nice find.

Khannie

Yeah, I was very impressed. Digging through the code for a nugget like that, then finding and being able to exploit it shows real skill and tenacity.

Khannie

They go into detail here about how they did it.

Impetus

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/new-stats-show-ashley-madison-passwords-are-just-as-weak-as-all-the-rest/

The password is a really bad "security device" in the hands of the masses. It would be perhaps better for a site to enforce an "KL3`}}zaX'Q.2<t*/E\" type password which the user would probably have to store locally, even if they use their browser to store same (not the best option). This would remove the risk of use of "qwerty" and similar "passwords", and enforce a different password for each site, for each user.

Needless to say that even this is inadequate for payment services.

syklops

Impetus wrote: »

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/09/new-stats-show-ashley-madison-passwords-are-just-as-weak-as-all-the-rest/

It would be perhaps better for a site to enforce an "KL3`}}zaX'Q.2<t*/E\" type password .....

No. Length is whats important, not complexity. The longest password on that list was ashleymadison which is 13 characters. Longer passwords take much longer to crack and are much easier to remember.

Impetus

syklops wrote: »

No. Length is whats important, not complexity. The longest password on that list was ashleymadison which is 13 characters. Longer passwords take much longer to crack and are much easier to remember.

I actually truncated my example from "KL3`}}zaX'Q.2<t*/E\ZBe:$N2oz>v5=@PoF\{Ge~KU]$$t4NAGx&amp;?`L!l!t>Z&" to be more "user friendly".

Shorter passwords work OK if the server is designed to lock out failed attempts after say three wrong attempts for say 24h. Assuming they are hashed and salted properly in the password storage process, even if they are stolen/downloaded and taken to a cracking system, a relatively short well designed password should be good for most purposes. We are just talking about a social networking site here .... admittedly a rather crappy one. It is a lot stronger than AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaBC - and most sites won't take really long passwords. There are some US banks that only take 8 (max) upper and lower case alpha + 0-9, and do not use multi-factor systems.

syklops

Impetus wrote: »

a relatively short well designed password should be good for most purposes.

Can you define what a relatively short, well-designed password looks like?

and most sites won't take really long passwords.

My passwords are all very long and very few sites reject my passwords due to their length. Its irritating how many reject my password choices because I dont have any special characters though.

Impetus

syklops wrote: »

Can you define what a relatively short, well-designed password looks like?

It depends on the "value at risk". It should include non-alphabetic characters, upper and lower case, numbers, and be random. There are random password generators on the net - eg https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm run by Steve Gibson. You can use a portion of his suggested 63 character password.

My email provider limits me to 20 characters - but only allows 3 attempts before lockout.

Where there is a lot of value at risk, eg bank transfers, I only use banks with multi-factor authentication, which uses a smart card, calculator, user id, and for each payment requires a part of the IBAN being paid (they select which five digits), which also go into the calculator to generate a second alpha numeric code based on time, user, recipient, and amount of payment to prevent a replay attack.

No matter how long one's password might be simple or complex, there is the issue of a keystroke logger. And even with multi-factor authentication, there is a risk of a sophisticated logger that will grab your multi-factor authentication as you enter it, and prevent you from using same, transmitting the credentials to a criminal to perform an attack and show you some crap on screen while s/he is busy on your account. At least with IBAN based variability in the multi-factor authentication, the crook can't grab a payment validation credential and use it to send money somewhere else.

In addition, I use "view only" online banking for accounts with material amounts (eg one's pension investments). Not an issue in Ireland, because Irish bank accounts are normally cash only affairs - ie no equities, bonds, commodities, precious metals allowed in an Irish bank account. Hence people can only think of "investing" in property.... leading to NAMA etc. But that is another story.

syklops

It depends on the "value at risk". It should include non-alphabetic characters, upper and lower case, numbers, and be random. There are random password generators on the net - eg https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm run by Steve Gibson. You can use a portion of his suggested 63 character password.

On this particular item we will have to agree to disagree.

My email provider limits me to 20 characters - but only allows 3 attempts before lockout.

The lockouts don't help if the password database has been leaked. Though I agree there should be account lockouts in place. If there had been account lockouts in place at Apple the fappening wouldn't have happened.

hooplah

syklops wrote: »

My passwords are all very long and very few sites reject my passwords due to their length. Its irritating how many reject my password choices because I dont have any special characters though.

I've had a few sites reject passwords due to length. The stupidist example was a site which allowed a long password that was then too long for their mobile app.

Khannie

I'd say lots of people signed up to that site not giving a poop about their password. I have done that with sites in the past but for 99% of sites I use keepass. I know one girl (unmarried) who went on there for the craic. If you're doing it out of curiosity (and I bet many did) you might be inclined to use a throwaway password.

I agree though that generally passwords aren't the best.

I've recently come across clef which I like quite a bit but I'd prefer it as 2FA rather than single sign on.

syklops

Khannie wrote: »

I'd say lots of people signed up to that site not giving a poop about their password. I have done that with sites in the past but for 99% of sites I use keepass. I know one girl (unmarried) who went on there for the craic. If you're doing it out of curiosity (and I bet many did) you might be inclined to use a throwaway password.

I agree though that generally passwords aren't the best.

I've recently come across clef which I like quite a bit but I'd prefer it as 2FA rather than single sign on.

What's clef? A means to meet bored house wives?

pah

syklops wrote: »

What's clef? A means to meet bored house wives?

I personally go with a word, substitute some letters with numbers, add some digits and special chars.

Instead of password you could use P@s5w0rD999&£

Not too complicated to remember but still complex and unlikely to be found in a wordlist for hash cracking.

_Tombstone_

UK Gov says to use shorter easy to remember passwords.

I'll get right on it.

_Tombstone_

Don't be wearing a smartwatch when changing those passwords.

syklops

_Tombstone_ wrote: »

UK Gov says to use shorter easy to remember passwords.

I'll get right on it.

Nooooooooo! Who gives this advice? Actually I know one of the guys who advises downing street on infomational security issues. He's an absolute arsehole.

I agree about the needlessly complex ones but length is really important to make cracking difficult.

Khannie

syklops wrote: »

What's clef? A means to meet bored house wives?

Eh...no. It's a method for logging into websites with your smartphone. Pretty handy. I have some concerns, but overall it reduces your attack surface.

Impetus

Khannie wrote: »

I'd say lots of people signed up to that site not giving a poop about their password. I have done that with sites in the past but for 99% of sites I use keepass. I know one girl (unmarried) who went on there for the craic. If you're doing it out of curiosity (and I bet many did) you might be inclined to use a throwaway password.

I agree though that generally passwords aren't the best.

I've recently come across clef which I like quite a bit but I'd prefer it as 2FA rather than single sign on.

As I said it is down to value at risk. Most social networking sites have little tangible value to the user. Ashley Madison type sites are an obvious exception. It also depends on who you are. A Facebook for Coke would be more value at risk than a Facebook page for Jane Doe.

anvilfour

I still think you can do worse than use diceware to choose and remember a strong password. My advice if you choose to do this though is to use the Beale word list as it contains fewer Americanisms.

While I have nothing against people who use password managers per se (although I am wary of online ones like Lastpass), it actually is fairly easy to remember a number of randomly chosen dictionary words, also if you practise memory techniques you can include non dictionary words and special characters if you wish.

syklops

anvilfour wrote: »

While I have nothing against people who use password managers per se (although I am wary of online ones like Lastpass), it actually is fairly easy to remember a number of randomly chosen dictionary words, also if you practise memory techniques you can include non dictionary words and special characters if you wish.

This is where the myth comes from. "Don't use dictionary words because hackers use dictionaries when cracking passwords", which is how we end up with Tr0b@d0R! nonsense. Chain multiple dictionary words together. That way its easy to remember and you get nice long passwords.

anvilfour

syklops wrote: »

This is where the myth comes from. "Don't use dictionary words because hackers use dictionaries when cracking passwords", which is how we end up with Tr0b@d0R! nonsense. Chain multiple dictionary words together. That way its easy to remember and you get nice long passwords.

syklops

anvilfour wrote: »

This is what I've been talking about all this time, but I've posted that graphic so many times.

anvilfour

syklops wrote: »

This is what I've been talking about all this time, but I've posted that graphic so many times.

But do people listen..? :-D

syklops

anvilfour wrote: »

But do people listen..? :-D

Nope.

I logged into a system recently used for configuring SMS systems for Irish mobile systems.

Enter a password of at least 3 characters.

:eek: