Disclaimer: I use a password manager, so please don’t direct your comments at me.
So I know this person that says they don’t use a password manager because they have a better system like… I’m gonna give an example:
Lets say, a person loves Star Wars, and their favorite character is Yoda. The favorite Their favorite phrase is from The Good Place “This is the Bad Place!”. And their favorite date is 1969 July 20th (first landing on moon).
So here:
Star Wars Yoda = SWYd
“This is the Bad Place!” = ThIThBaPl!
1969 July 20 —> 69 07 20
So they have this “core” password = SWydThIThBaPl!690720
Then for each website, they add the website’s first and last 2 characters of the name to the front of the password…
So, “Lemmy Forum” = leum
Add this to the beginning of the “core” password it becomes:
leumSWydThIThBaPl!690720
For Protomail Email it’s: prilSWydThIThBaPl!690720
For Amazon Shopping it’s: amngSWydThIThBaPl!690720
Get the idea?
The person says that, since the beginning of the password is unique, its “unhackable”, and that the attacker would need like 3 samples of the password to figure out their system.
Is this person’s “password system” actually secure?
It’s probably not safe if they use that for everything. Someone could match emails and password suffixes, then they’d only have four letters to brute force. So all it takes is two leaks that your friend is on and they’re at real risk.
Generally, this would be avoided by whatever site storing their passwords as hashes instead of in plain text, but you can’t rely on that.
They should just use a password manager.
If they start using Keepass, we now know, their master password will be: kessSWydThIThBaPl!690720
I hope OP just constructed the core password as an example only.
I used to do this. Have a system for generating a unique password for each site. But then one site got hacked and I had to reset my password, and I couldn’t use the old password. So I had to make a new system. You see the problem.
A solution to this is to keep adding elements to the chain to create a new password. Like your base password is FavouriteCharacter2025siteletters, and if you need to change it, go for FavouriteCharacter2025siteletters!!!
If you add the same element across accounts when you need to change a pw, it’s still easy to remember, just a few more try when you forget it, it’s still useful against database leaks, and it’s not worse when it comes to targeted hack.
How many sites are we talking about? I have like 600 passwords in my password manager, it would be insane to try to remember each of the rules for when I changed the password last.
Well if you only change your password 3-4 times, you only have 4-5 options to try. You also kinda remember for most website if you changed your password a lot or not, so you naturally try the most plausible option first, at least in my experience.
If you regularly change your password, it can become a nightmare, i agree.
That doesn’t really answer the question though, you just assumed that attackers would instantly figure out your system with a sample size of 1. How do they do that? Not saying that they definitely can’t, but I want to see logical arguments before I believe it.
That’s not the point they’re making at all.
The point is when a website password
breedsneeds to be changed, then it won’t conform to the system anymore. Now you need to make a new system, or remember this particular exception.I had a system with a number in it. Any time a password change was needed then I would add 1 to the number. I might have to try two or the times to get the password right if I’ve changed it for the third time.
when a website password breeds
I didn’t know passwords could reproduce, is that how password generators work? /j
Yes exactly. Now the account locks you out after n tries, so yould also encounter problems down the road.
It’s not about being safe. It’s about losing track of your ability to track your unique passwords once one site nullifies it’s password.
I used to use a similar system until I switched to a password manager. Convenience is a big factor, it’s nice to not have to think about logging in. Also coupled with that a secure password is a long password, so not having to type it in is a bonus.
The person says that, since the beginning of the password is unique, its “unhackable”, and that the attacker would need like 3 samples of the password to figure out their system.
I’ve had my data leaked more than 3 times, it’s not an unlikely scenario that someone could get a list of passwords used by someone.
Also once their system is compromised, they have to come up with a new system, then go and change every password. Which if it was me would be hundreds of places. With a password manager there’s no reason not to have completely unique passwords for everything, so if there is a leak, oh well, just change that password.
You can buy leaked passwords from the dark web if you know someone’s email.
So if someone got say 5 passwords from this person and look at them they’d very quickly be able to figure out the pattern and would know all their passwords.
The method they use is safe from scripts etc. But not foolproof
There are two answers to your question.
Most password cracking operations target a database of user accounts in bulk. As long as the hacker is not targeting your friend specifically, they should be fine.
If your friend is the target, one or two successful hacks could make their other passwords vulnerable.It’s safe until you’re targeted.
From what I understand, they (hackers) try known email/password combinations at different sites because a lot of people reuse their passwords. I also find it unlikely that anyone trying hack accounts will spend any amount of time looking at individual passwords if their list is 1000+ (and we know there are leaks in the milions).
I agree that they are reasonably save unless they are targeted.
The problem is that it’s a common suffix among all of their passwords. That kind of thing is easy to search for in a password leak database.
Know your enemy:
- Dictionary attacks
- Leaked passwords
- Password guessing attacks
Your “system” is good against 1. but vulnerable against 2., and a bit vulnerable against 3. because of the system.
If you’re using a password on one site you’re trusting that site to keep that password safe, so that only you can access your account.
If you’re using one password everywhere you’re trusting the weakest site to keep your most important account safe, which is obviously a bad idea.
Your friend is trusting the weakest sites he uses (or used at any point in the past) to keep his password scheme safe. Not quite as obviously bad, but to me it doesn’t seem to be a particularly good idea either.
This system is fine. While patterns are obviously easier to hack, having unique passwords for each site and being able to remember them puts your friend in the 90th percentile of computer users.
For random password dumps going through thousands of accounts it’s probably fine, but if you’re targeted for some reason and they get just a couple passwords. With even just 2 passwords, that system may be obvious already to someone looking to gain access to your accounts specifically.
I reject the premise!
There is no safe or unsafe. It’s more like “more safe for a given person”.
Your friend’s system is better than using the same password everywhere. It’s more difficult to hack than the majority of passwords that aren’t generated by password managers. If that’s what your friend likes and works for them well, fine I guess.
It wouldn’t work for me because:
- it doesn’t input the password for you. Does your friend really type passwords in all the time?
- IDK if my memory is particularly bad but having to remember anything at all is hit and miss. Like I could remember those characters that are used everywhere, but for the router at my mum and dads house that I haven’t accessed in 5 years, was it “mums router” or “router mums house”
- Also I manage multiple passwords for the same sites, as in credentials for my partner or whatever, but I guess I could make variant of this system.
- also if I were to die the person who sorts out all my stuff will have access to my passwords
- but the main reason is… I use my keepassxc db as a database for all sorts of things which aren’t necessarily passwords. ssh keys are a good example. I use it for TOTP. bank card details. membership numbers and government ids. VIN numbers for vehicles. Also, a weird one, I have to keep track of about 100 physical keys for reasons, I stamp a number on them like k32 and then store that number and an explanation of what it’s for in my db.
There’s literally only 4 characters difference between all their passwords, even if those would be completely random, that’s very bad.
They don’t seem to understand that it’s not about how many samples you need to see to be sure what their Amazon password is. The problem is that if one of their passwords ever leaks, some bot can brute-force try thousands of variations on it and find any other password very quickly (they effectively only have to guess 4 characters, plus a bit to find that it’s the first 4 to change).
How can anyone think this is more secure than having completely different and long passwords for every site?
They probably don’t understand that your pw manager’s password is safer because you don’t enter it anywhere, only into your password manager (ideally with 2FA). This person is effectively spreading their master password around by putting it as the core of ALL their passwords, significantly increasing the risk that it leaks.
There’s literally only 4 characters difference between all their passwords, even if those would be completely random, that’s very bad.
So the 4 characters is just my way to explain their system, I don’t actually know how many characters they use in their “unique” part of the password, but the idea is that the unique part of the password is derived from the website.
The relationship is the problem.
Calculating the levenshtein distance is the first thing that comes to mind, then creating a regular expression that covers any leaked passwords tied to the same account.
This is all easily scriptable and two leaked passwords might be all a script needs to discover the pattern. Once the pattern is known, all of their passwords become knowable.
Obviously random is better, but uniqueness of passwords is IMO even more important. They are effectively spreading around their master password
Better than a lot of other methods. What are you protecting, from who and how annoying would it be to recover if it went wrong. I don’t use a password manager because I’d lose the file for sure and it would be just as inconvenient to recover as if someone hacked me. I also don’t have any sensitive stuff. Work on the other hand I have a password manager.
The lowest hanging fruit is using a leaked/hacked/stolen list of accounts/emails and passwords and trying them on other sites. You should be safe from that.
If you have sensitive information someone would be willing to break the law and spend a few thousands of dollars to get you’re not safe.
I hope you didn’t make their actual basic phrase public.In my opinion any password that’s designed to be human-friendly isn’t secure. Every crutch one uses to remember it, a machine can make much faster use of.
In this case I’d say the core idea: “SWydThIThBaPl!” is relatively safe, but 690720 is almost immediately recognizable as a date - to a machine! - and amng, leum etc. are even easier assuming the cracking program has knowledge of which site they’re trying to gain access to.
So the only good part is the one that repeats for every password.
I think the top half of this xkcd illustrates some of it; but iirc the bottom half has been sort-of half debunked.
In any case, I use only very long and completely random passwords for online accounts.
Does this person think password managers are crutches? You cannot out-remember a machine.
PS: entropy is not the only measure for password safety.
- Dictionary attacks
- Leaked passwords
- Password guessing attacks
Brute force comes way down the list.
Its an example. Not a real password
If you replace the “SWydThIThBaPl!690720” part with a random string like: dsh2box5hRs3wraA (just generated this), but kept the system the same, would your assessment of this system be different? (Assuming someone can actually remember that string of characters)
Your new example is confusing. With or without the date?
In any case, what would be the point? “I can remember the first 4 letters of the password but not the last 20”?
This person needs to understand that they cannot outsmart a machine, at least not in this. FWIW I’ve been using keepassxc for I don’t even remember how many years and never had a problem with it. It has the option to additionally encrypt the database with a file, so if someone steals the database and even manages to guess the password (the only one that I haven’t written down anywhere) they still don’t have access.
“Lemmy Forum” = leumdsh2box5hRs3wraA
Protomail Email = prildsh2box5hRs3wraA
Amazon Shopping = amngdsh2box5hRs3wraA
but iirc the bottom half has been sort-of half debunked
Any source for this? It’s literally just random words. Just pick from a large enough list and you’re good.
Things a password cracker does before brute force guessing:
- Dictionary attacks
- Leaked passwords
- Password guessing attacks
- …
If you pick 4 random words, the attacker would still need to brute force through (hundreds of?) billions of word combinations. That’s the point.
Yeah you’re correct. The person you’re replying to is treating dictionary attacks as separate from brute forcing. Dictionary attacks are great on short passwords using likely words, but as soon as you use 2 or 3 or 4 words it becomes computationally unfeasible. I would say a completely random string of the same or much less length is more secure because a dictionary attack won’t work at all, but 3-4 word passphrases are excellent for passwords that you have to manually enter ever.
As long as it’s capitalized with a 1! at the end
