full-disclosure - Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely!

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From: toddtowles at brookshires.com (Todd Towles)
Subject: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely!

I was under the understand that passwords of over 14 characters were
stored with a more secure hash, therefore 14 characters passwords were
harder to crack, due to the more secure hash. Windows will create two
different hashes for passwords shorting than 14 characters, I do
believe.

Just use a non-printable character in your password and cracking is
useless...if they crack it, they can't read what they cracked. ;) 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: full-disclosure-admin@...ts.netsys.com 
> [mailto:full-disclosure-admin@...ts.netsys.com] On Behalf Of 
> Pavel Kankovsky
> Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 2:21 PM
> To: full-disclosure@...ts.netsys.com
> Subject: Re: [Full-Disclosure] Senior M$ member says stop 
> using passwords completely!
> 
> On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Frank Knobbe wrote:
> 
> > It's a nice recommendation of MS to make (to use long passphrases 
> > instead of passwords). But I don't consider 14 chars a "passphrase".
> > Perhaps they should enable more/all password components to 
> handle much 
> > longer passwords/phrases.
> 
> A passphrase consisting of 7 words and 12 bits of entropy per 
> a word is as guessable as a password with 14 characters and 6 
> bits of entropy per a character. You get 84 bits of total 
> entropy in both cases.
> 
> The only advantage of passphrases is that lusers might find 
> long random sequences of words easier to remember than long 
> random sequences of characters.
> 
> (But wait: 12 bits of entropy per a word--this is equivalent 
> to a uniform choice of one word out of 4096. 4 thousand? That 
> might exceed an average luser's vocabulary by an order of 
> magnitude! ;>)
> 
> --Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak  [ Boycott 
> Microsoft--http://www.vcnet.com/bms ] "Resistance is futile. 
> Open your source code and prepare for assimilation."
> 
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