Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 13:56:14 +0100
From: John Bradford <john@grabjohn.com>
Message-Id: <200307231256.h6NCuEqX001509@81-2-122-30.bradfords.org.uk>
To: davem@redhat.com, herbert@gondor.apana.org.au
Subject: Re: 2.4.22-pre7: are security issues solved?
Cc: a.marsman@aYniK.com, alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 886
Lines: 24

> > 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.  However, if you did know the upper bound, or you were just
> brute forcing all passwords starting from 1 character, then the
> difference is relatively minor.  This is because
>
> n + n^2 + n^3 + n^4 + n^5 + n^6
>
> is much smaller than n^7 where n is something like 62 for a reasonable
> password.
>
> So if your password was broken using this method, then it's probably
> too short anyway.

One time passwords are much more secure.

John.
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