Re: Password recommendations

From: Mike Danseglio \(MSFT\) (nospam_mikedan@online.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/27/03 

From: "Mike Danseglio \(MSFT\)" <nospam_mikedan@online.microsoft.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 12:08:31 -0800

What an excellent question!

Basically, that recommendation forces both seven-character chunks of the
password to be non-zero. This requires much more work on the part of the
existing password cracking tools. Its true that a fourteen character
password is far more secure than an eight character. But a seven character
leaves one whole half of the password as null, which is instantly broken.

Hope that helps. 

--
-Mike Danseglio
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
"Jennifer" <Jennylats@aol.com> wrote in message
news:356601c2f2d8$3f4b4370$a201280a@phx.gbl...
> Microsoft recommends that a password be 8 characters long -
> however, passwords are stored in 7 character lengths
> making an 8 character password easiest to figure out.  My
> question is why do they recommend 8 then?  am I missing
> something?

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The First Novel You Read By...
    ... > the character being clever or the world logical. ... (The worst example of it is THE VOR GAME, ... But it's not a flaw which consistently crops up in her work. ... But I strongly endorse the earlier recommendation of "Mountains of ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)
  • Re: Just finished . . .
    ... Just finished "The Poe Shadow" by Matthew Pearl - a recommendation I ... compelling search by our fictional character, ... My only issue was that 3-4 of the stories that were in the ...
    (rec.arts.mystery)
  • Re: Tentative MAG Update
    ... a stronger recommendation on the starting character ... I've come up with the following recommendation. ... any character type. ... ascensions on that server. ...
    (rec.games.roguelike.nethack)
  • Woodstocks non-genre recommendation
    ... Recently she posted a recommendation of Amy Bloom's AWAY. ... The main character is a Russian immigrant who fled the ... country after her family was destroyed because they were Jews. ... we learn about the rest of the person's life. ...
    (rec.arts.mystery)
  • Re: If statement
    ... greater than 0 then the empty vector would be constructed. ... since that value is *not* non-zero, ... Others might argue, though, that the: character could be the ... an equality comparison, ...
    (comp.soft-sys.matlab)