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Full Discussion: Why use strong passwords?
Special Forums Cybersecurity Why use strong passwords? Post 302726991 by Neo on Monday 5th of November 2012 12:57:01 PM
Old 11-05-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neo
According to this quick wikipedia article on password strength (FWIW):
Quote:
As of 2011, commercial products are available that claim the ability to test up to 2,800,000,000 passwords per second on a standard desktop computer using a high-end graphics processor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgt
Picking easy passwords allows the use of a "common password dictionary", however, even this method requires the testing be done on the target system, as not all systems use the same algorithm or seed.
A 'simple' password of 8 characters made up of only lowercase letters and digits allows 2821109907456 possibilities, which at 1000 possibilities per second still requires 32615 days to test.

Given these two quotes above, jgt's example goes from 32615 days to test to 0.0116 days to test, or a bit more than 15 minutes (around 17 minutes, I think if my math was right).

Edit: Confirmed 16.79 minutes using a high end desktop computer in 2011 per the wikipedia number in the reference
 

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lchage(8)						      System Manager's Manual							 lchage(8)

NAME
lchage - Display or change user password policy SYNOPSIS
lchage [OPTION]... user DESCRIPTION
Displays or allows changing password policy of user. OPTIONS
-d, --date=days Set the date of last password change to days after Jan 1 1970. -E, --expire=days Set the account expiration date to days after Jan 1 1970. Set days to -1 to disable account expiration. -i, --interactive Ask all questions when connecting to the user database, even if default answers are set up in libuser configuration. -I, --inactive=days Disable the account after days after password expires (after the user user is required to change the password). -l, --list Only list current user's policy and make no changes. -m, --mindays=days Require at least days days between password changes. Set days to 0 to disable this checking. -M, --maxdays=days Require changing the password after days since last password change. Set days to 99999 to disable this checking. -W, --warndays=days Start warning the user days before password expires (before the user is required to change the password). EXIT STATUS
The exit status is 0 on success, nonzero on error. libuser Jan 12 2005 lchage(8)
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