this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2024
193 points (98.5% liked)

linuxmemes

28687 readers
2103 users here now

Hint: :q!


Sister communities:


Community rules (click to expand)

1. Follow the site-wide rules

2. Be civil
  • Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
  • Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
  • Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
  • Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
  • Bigotry will not be tolerated.
  • 3. Post Linux-related content
  • Including Unix and BSD.
  • Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of sudo in Windows.
  • No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
  • Don't come looking for advice, this is not the right community.
  • 4. No recent reposts
  • Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
  • 5. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Language/язык/Sprache
  • This is primarily an English-speaking community. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
  • Comments written in other languages are allowed.
  • The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
  • Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
  • 6. (NEW!) Regarding public figuresWe all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations.
  • Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
  • We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
  • Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed.
  • Β 

    Please report posts and comments that break these rules!


    Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.

    founded 2 years ago
    MODERATORS
     
    you are viewing a single comment's thread
    view the rest of the comments
    [–] bjorney@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    Words are the least secure way to generate a password of a given length because you are limiting your character set to 26, and character N gives you information about the character at position N+1

    The most secure way to generate a password is to uniformly pick bytes from the entire character set using a suitable form of entropy

    Edit: for the dozens of people still feeling the need to reply to me: RSA keys are fixed length, and you don't need to memorize them. Using a dictionary of words to create your own RSA key is intentionally kneecapping the security of the key.

    [–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

    That's only really true if you're going to be storing the password in a secure vault after randomly generating it; otherwise, it's terrible because 1) nobody will be able to remember it so they'll be writing it down, and 2) it'll be such a pain to type that people will find ways to circumvent it at every possible turn

    Pass phrases, even when taken with the idea that it's a limited character set that follows a semi predictable flow, if you look at it in terms of the number of words possible it actually is decently secure, especially if the words used are random and not meaningful to the user. Even limiting yourself to the 1000 most common words in the English language and using 4 words, that's one trillion possible combinations without even accounting for modifying capitalisation, adding a symbol or three, including a short number at the end...

    And even with that base set, even if a computer could theoretically try all trillion possibilities quickly, it'll make a ton of noise, get throttled, and likely lock the account out long before it has a chance to try even the tiniest fraction of them

    Your way is theoretically more secure, but practically only works for machines or with secure password storage. If it's something a human needs to remember and type themselves, phrases of random words is much more viable and much more likely to be used in a secure fashion.

    [–] hedgehog@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 year ago

    Generally people don’t memorize private keys, but this is applicable when generating pass phrases to protect private keys that are stored locally.

    Leaving this here in case anyone wants to use this method: https://www.eff.org/dice

    [–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

    Edit: Oops forgot what the topic was.

    [–] bjorney@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
    1. we are talking about RSA keys - you don't memorize your RSA keys

    2. if you rely on memorizing all your passwords, I assume that means you have ample password reuse, which is a million times worse than using a different less-secure password on every site

    [–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Derp. Forgot where I was.

    I find passphrases easy to remember and I have several. I appreciate the concern, but I understand basic password safety.

    [–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

    Good luck remembering random bytes. That infographic is about memorable passwords.

    [–] bjorney@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
    [–] sus@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

    you memorize the password required to decrypt whatever container your RSA key is in. Hopefully.

    [–] shrugs@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    so you are saying 44 bits of entropy is not enough. the whole point of the comic is, that 4 words out of a list of 2000 is more secure then some shorter password with leetcode and a number and punctuation at the end. which feels rather intuitive given that 4 words are way easier to remember