[clue] My password rant

Mike Bean beandaemon at gmail.com
Wed Aug 10 20:20:59 MDT 2011


Maybe I am the novice, but I guess I don't really get it.  There's a leap
there.  His "strong password" consists of a collection of 25 characters of
which there are 26 possibles, so if we're really talking about brute force
guessing, how could 25 to the 26th power possible combinations be harder to
guess then 60 or 70 (give or take) to the 26th power and some change?

I guess I'm new to crypto, but when you get right down to it, I don't really
grok this concept of 28 bits of entropy versus 44 bits of entropy.  What is
entropy?  (in the crypto sense)??   And how did he manage to calculate 28
bits v 44??  Is it just because there are more digits?

Don't most competently configured systems lock you out after 10 failed tries
anyway?
Normally I totally support XKCD, but honestly, I can tell there's more going
on in strip 936 then I understand.

Bean

On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 5:20 PM, David L. Willson <DLWillson at thegeek.nu>wrote:

> I'm never giving my password rant again. I'm just going to send a link to
> this XKCD, and wait a few minutes until my novice "gets it".
>
> http://www.xkcd.com/936/
>
> David L. Willson
> Trainer, Engineer, Enthusiast
> RHCE MCT MCSE Network+ A+ Linux+ LPIC-1 NovellCLA UbuntuCP
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