This just in, longer passwords are harder to crack!
As others have said, without knowing the formatting (last 2 chars are always random or arbitrary), there is no way to attack the first one aside from brute force, same as the second one. Doing this will mean the longer the password, the more itterations, and the harder to crack.
As for the second part of the comic, difficulty to remember - I have 5 passwords, all different, which are at least 12 characters long, have to have 2 lower case, 2 caps, 2 numbers, and 2 special characters in them, and change every 60 days. I have no issues remembering them. Maybe the real topic of the comic was to say "Many people who use PC's are not very smart?"
Ookane posted: This just in, longer passwords are harder to crack!
As for the second part of the comic, difficulty to remember - I have 5 passwords, all different, which are at least 12 characters long, have to have 2 lower case, 2 caps, 2 numbers, and 2 special characters in them, and change every 60 days. I have no issues remembering them. Maybe the real topic of the comic was to say "Many people who use PC's are not very smart?"
Or maybe smart people have WAY better things to do with their time...than coming up with a complicated password scheme on a 60 day rotation just to insult everyone else that finds the current system of passwords a bit cumbersome.
And on a side note, I CURRENTLY have at least a dozen pins/passwords/doorcodes in my daily life that couldn't remotely fit into your "system." On a weekly basis, I use 20-30 codes/keys/passwords/etc for work alone. But then...I'm probably stupid for not wanting to remember 5 more passwords with 12 characters of upper and lower case, numbers, and special characters which last 2 months max.
Ookane posted: This just in, longer passwords are harder to crack!
As others have said, without knowing the formatting (last 2 chars are always random or arbitrary), there is no way to attack the first one aside from brute force, same as the second one. Doing this will mean the longer the password, the more itterations, and the harder to crack.
As for the second part of the comic, difficulty to remember - I have 5 passwords, all different, which are at least 12 characters long, have to have 2 lower case, 2 caps, 2 numbers, and 2 special characters in them, and change every 60 days. I have no issues remembering them. Maybe the real topic of the comic was to say "Many people who use PC's are not very smart?"
If it was just 5 passwords to remember, maybe I could be okay with that. But who has only 5 passwords? I have dozens, probably hundreds of passwords. There is no way I'm remembering each one.
So I see people recommend having a pattern that integrates the website or service name into the password somehow. Which I tried, but even that just got complicated to manage and remember.
I've given up. I now entrust most of my passwords to a password manager.
Heh, I have way to many passwords. It is a liability of the job. At the same time I have to deal with confidential information for clients and am always on the go. I just have a usb thumb drive that I keep around my neck that is encrypted with all the sensitive stuff on it and yes that password is not going to be cracked any time soon, lol.
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Ookane posted: This just in, longer passwords are harder to crack!
As others have said, without knowing the formatting (last 2 chars are always random or arbitrary), there is no way to attack the first one aside from brute force, same as the second one. Doing this will mean the longer the password, the more itterations, and the harder to crack.
As for the second part of the comic, difficulty to remember - I have 5 passwords, all different, which are at least 12 characters long, have to have 2 lower case, 2 caps, 2 numbers, and 2 special characters in them, and change every 60 days. I have no issues remembering them. Maybe the real topic of the comic was to say "Many people who use PC's are not very smart?"
Whar is tinfoil hat?
I just use lastpass... don't have to remember any passwords save for one extremely complicated one.
Apparently some companies need to unify some things. If you have so many different things that are so critical you need highly complex seperate passwords for that many different systems, something is wrong with the overall architecture. Obviously most of us are in IT related positions and of higher of intelligence than the average PC user.
I don't make the group policy that enforces the length or strength of passwords I use, I just obey the system, and those as the minimum requirements, so save to comments about how you are a smart person, but somehow cannot remember passwords, or that you think I need a tinfoil hat because I am paranoid. Companies have IP (intellectual property) they want to protect and much if it involves passwords which they get to have the say on their requirements.
Any of us who have had to ever work with the general population that uses PC's at work and home know firsthand that they are not even close to being in the same league as the majority here. These are people who have no clue how to share a folder, let alone would ever crack the case on a PC to do anything inside it. These same people use things like anniversaries, birthdays, or kids/pets names for passwords. Having so many passwords that a program to manage them is a sign of some overall broken setup or system.
For things outside of work I use a handful of passwords depending on how secure I feel access to said location is. This gives me another 5 outside of work, which I use from everything like message boards to email accounts, to online banking. Those which I need more security around I change more often and use a harder/longer password. Things I could give a rats ass about and are not a huge risk to me have easier passwords. In my past 15 years of working in IT as a profession, I have been hacked exactly zero times. I use proper antivirus/spyware on all devices and keep these up to date. I patch when patches are availible, and I am careful about where I go on the web and what I download and use. I leverage things like firewalls, proxies, and "private browsing" mode when in areas I suspect might be less than secure and safe.
Mostly it's just about common sense, which I have found over the years is a misnomer - it's not very common at all.
there's no way I can remember every password. 
