16

Basic cyber security says that passwords should be encrypted and hashed, so that even the company storing them doesn't know what the password is. (When you log in, the site performs the same encrypting and hashing steps and compares the results) Otherwise if they are hacked, the attackers get access to all the passwords.

I've noticed a few companies ask for specific characters of my password to prove who I am (eg enter the 2nd and 9th character)

Is there any secure way that this could be happening? Or are the companies storing my password in plain text?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] r00ty@kbin.life 1 points 1 year ago

I'm finding it hard to see how it would be more secure. If I understand what the other comment meant, they would have something like:

password123 = ef92b778bafe771e89245b89ecbc08a44a4e166c06659911881f383d4473e94f

We'll assume they pick 4 random pairs

3rd + 5th (sw) = 7865b7e6b9d241d744d330eec3b3a0fe4f9d36af75d96291638504680f805bfd
9th + 11th (13) = 3fdba35f04dc8c462986c992bcf875546257113072a909c162f7e470e581e278
2nd + 5th (aw) = f5fe88ee08735ae259265495a93c8de2b0eacfecf0cd90b5821479be3199fa8c
6th + 8th (od) = 32f30ea0e83c41a331c4330213005568675f7542c25f354ebb634db78cc30d12

Assuming all 128 7bit character options are used and ignoring dictionary or optimized attacks the complexity of the full password is 7x11 or 77 bits (or 151,115,727,451,828,646,838,272 combinations). So with just the password hash that's how many tries you need to exhaust every possible option, again without optimizing the process.

But for each of the pairs the complexity is 14 bits or 16,384 combinations. So it would take microseconds to crack all 4 of the pairs. With that information you'd get a password of ?as?wo?d1?3?????? (because we don't know the length) and if they have used a common word or series of words you might have enough information to guess the rest, but even when brute forcing you've removed a decent amount of complexity.

Note: This is SHA256. We're going to ignore salt for this. Salt only increases complexity because you need to crack each user's password and not able to really use rainbow tables etc.

Unless I misunderstood the idea. In which case, sorry about that.

In all likelihood it is encrypted in a database and the interface to the phone operator only allows them to enter what is said and confirm (although I wouldn't be surprised of some showing the whole password).

this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
16 points (100.0% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35312 readers
1238 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS