Cracking Windows passwords in seconds

[Gary Stoneburner <gary.stoneburner@nist.gov>]

re:
http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-5053063.html?tag=fd_top

"Swiss researchers released a paper on Tuesday outlining a way to
speed the cracking of alphanumeric Windows passwords, reducing the time
to break such codes to an average of 13.6 seconds, from 1 minute 41
seconds"

"The researcher used a 1.4GB lookup table and a single computer with
an Advanced Micro Devices 2500+ processor and 1.5GB of RAM to offer
people a way to test the process online."  (URL points to page
that says "Welcome to the web interface of the "Advanced
Instant NT Password Cracker")

"Oechslin, for example, has created a new version of his program
using 20GB of lookup tables that can break passwords made of numbers,
letters and 16 other characters in an average of 30 seconds for large
batches of passwords."

Cheers anyway,
Gary

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* Opinions expressed are not intended to reflect an official position
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* Gary Stoneburner
* Computer Security Division, National Institute of Standards & Technology
* 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8930, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8930         
* Phone: 301-975-5394, FAX: 301-948-0279, Email: Stoneburner@nist.gov
* http://csrc.nist.gov/staff/stoneburner/gshome.html
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