Smarter People Don't Have Better Passwords, Study Finds (bleepingcomputer.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: A study carried out at a college in the Philippines shows that students with better grades use bad passwords in the same proportion as students with bad ones. The study's focused around a new rule added to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) guideline for choosing secure passwords -- added in its 2017 edition. The NIST recommendation was that websites check if a user's supplied password was compromised before by verifying if the password is also listed in previous public breaches. If the password is included in previous breaches, the website is to consider the password insecure because all of these exposed passwords have most likely been added to even the most basic password-guessing brute-forcing tools.

Comments

Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does this still work? I would think we would have adjusted things years ago so that once a wrong password is tried like, oh, I don't know, say 50 times the account is locked. Or don't allow more than one attempt per second. Something along those lines.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Sarten-X]

Database hash dumps don't care about what online-attack rules you put in place.

Once they have the hashed-password database, it's just a matter of time before the attacker gets somebody's password. The goal is to make sure it's not yours, by using a long and totally-unique password... precisely what a password manager is good at generating and handling.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Xenolith0]

Yes! As the other poster said, account database dumps are commonly broken through brute force attempts. The tools to reverse hashes are not some "super secret cracker-only-thing either, hashcat is the best password-hash reversing brute force tool. It's free and open source and on the right hardware can have amazingly, absurdly, performant performance.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read about rainbow tables. In many, if not most, systems storing hashed passwords the length of the password is irrelevant and there is no attempt to guess the original password. Using a rainbow table you can find an equivalent password very quickly.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Daneel Olivaw R.]

Yes! As the other poster said, account database dumps are commonly broken through brute force attempts. The tools to reverse hashes are not some "super secret cracker-only-thing either, hashcat is the best password-hash reversing brute force tool. It's free and open source and on the right hardware can have amazingly, absurdly, performant performance.

sounds like too much work, can't we just extract them from system logs. For some reason (god knows why), writing passwords into logs seem to be a trend now.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[markdavis]

>"Database hash dumps don't care about what online-attack rules you put in place. Once they have the hashed-password database"

But how did they get such a database in the first place? It seems that is a pretty big feat on most systems. But brute-forcing most certainly is a thing, apparently, since my ssh ports get hammered constantly, all day long, 24x7. However, with fail-to-ban (or similar) installed, it is a 100% useless effort by those brute-forcers, regardless of password strength.

If one already has the entire database of the hashed passwords, then I am not sure it really matters all that much if a password is weak or medium or strong.... eventually they can be cracked and get at least some accounts. And if they could get their hands on the password database (typically a highly protected file), couldn't they already get their hands on any other information they wanted that was on the computer?

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[thsths]

True, but if your most precious database got compromised, what are you still protecting?

If you leak password hashes, you have a problem, and you cannot blame it on the user.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[CSMoran]

Why does this still work? I would think we would have adjusted things years ago so that once a wrong password is tried like, oh, I don't know, say 50 times the account is locked. Or don't allow more than one attempt per second. Something along those lines.

That's a nice account you've got there. Would be a pity if it got locked after, uh, someone tried a wrong passwords 50 times, wouldn't it?

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[bobstreo]

Why does this still work? I would think we would have adjusted things years ago so that once a wrong password is tried like, oh, I don't know, say 50 times the account is locked. Or don't allow more than one attempt per second. Something along those lines.

Of course, locking the account after some number of tries is handy if you want to just cause denial of access/service attacks. Then you get perturbed users who can't log into their accounts, and have to reset passwords/keys which requires time and effort.

I prefer to just block the offending IP after about 3 attempts.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Sarten-X]

But how did they get such a database in the first place?

SQL injection, malware, physical compromise, buffer overflow, side-channel attack, credential reuse, DNS hijacking, ARP spoofing, unpatched vulnerabilities... Pretty much for any attack vector you can think of, a password database is one of the potential targets.

As an example, let's consider the credentials to a web service, stored in a RDBMS. If that web service is insecure in particular ways, SQL injection can be used to dump the entirety of the database contents to an attacker's screen (which can then be converted into a nice username/email/password table).

And if they could get their hands on the password database (typically a highly protected file), couldn't they already get their hands on any other information they wanted that was on the computer?

Now yes, the SQL injection could probably also be used to manipulate the database in other ways, but that might not be the goal. Modifying the database for a financial service won't make the API calls to move money. It may be necessary to actually use another person's access, necessitating the hash reversal.

Another example, which is much more likely to be encountered in low-security environments, is the problem of credential reuse. If the attacker finds an administrative user in the database, there's a good chance that user's password is also used on internal systems, like that precious ssh server. If that password is weak, the whole enterprise is open to compromise, because of a SQL injection attack.

Even if there are no vulnerabilities (or worthwhile targets) in the company whose database was dumped, there are a lot of other targets that could be impacted. Notably, all those email addresses with usernames and passwords attached. Crack those passwords, then go hit the mail services and try them. Only one login failure per account, but you have thousands of email addresses to try across dozens or hundreds of mail services. With access to an email address, there are a lot of options for a criminal enterprise:

• Break a college email account? You probably also have access to the student service portal, and can redirect financial aid reimbursements or tuition refunds... then cancel all classes.
• Break a company email account? Read other emails to get a sense of corporate structure, then direct an underling to purchase high-value equipment from your own fly-by-night vendor.
• Break a personal email account? Reset passwords to banking websites, PayPal, loyalty programs, Steam, certain video games, or other value-holding services, and take whatever can transfer.
• Break a high-value email account, such as a multimillionaire or celebrity? Send emails to friends, family, and finance managers, and arrange a few emergency wire transfers to cover "unexpected expenses while traveling".

Information often isn't the end goal. Very often, database dumps and other attacks are just the intermediate steps in a criminal campaign to find victims for another attack.

I am not sure it really matters all that much if a password is weak or medium or strong.... eventually they can be cracked and get at least some accounts.

Unfortunately, from a user's perspective, this is out of your hands. If a service isn't salting their password hashes, then somebody's credentials are going to be broken quickly. However, it doesn't have to be yours, because you can make your password long and random without a salt, so the use of fast brute-forcing methods won't be effective (and the slow methods will take longer than the lifespan of the universe, with today's technology). In another worst-case scenario, you can assume your password for that service will be broken, and you can only hope for damage control. Turn on multi-factor authentication, enable activity alerts in email or SMS, and make sure your password is unique so it can't be used to get access anywhere else.

Again, because long and unique passwords so drastically improve one's security posture, a password manager is the easy route.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Sarten-X]

I'm not blaming the user. I'm advocating defense in depth.

If a password database is published, clearly the person operating that database's associated services has failed somehow and the world should be aware of it... but dragging a company through a PR nightmare isn't going to make the password hashes secret again, or undo any damage done to the users.

However, while it is still the service operator's responsibility to protect that database, the security of the password itself is almost entirely controlled by the user. The user alone has the ability to pick a long and unique password, so that even if their password hash is leaked, the risk of further damage is minimal. A long and unique password will take longer to be broken from the hash (improving the chance of outlasting the criminal enterprise), and it will be useless for credential reuse attacks against other services with potentially more value to the attackers.

To use the Slashdot-mandated car analogy, it's not your fault if you get hit by a drunk driver running a stoplight, but you should still wear a seat belt to improve your outcome if it does happen.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Database hash dumps don't care about what online-attack rules you put in place.

Once they have the hashed-password database, it's just a matter of time before the attacker gets somebody's password. The goal is to make sure it's not yours, by using a long and totally-unique password... precisely what a password manager is good at generating and handling.

The only problem I have with using managers is once that database is corrupted, you are basically fucked. There is no way to retrieve access to your accounts, as far as I know.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another example, which is much more likely to be encountered in low-security environments, is the problem of credential reuse.

Not something the article goes into.
It only says that smarter people doesn't pick better passwords, it doesn't say if they are more likely to reuse them or not.

I know that I reuse passwords a lot.
Every time some service that shouldn't need me to register but still does shows up I either just move on or I reuse a very simple extremely bruteforceable password that is easy for me to type and remember.
Anything important gets a unique password.

The article also doesn't go into if easily bruteforceable passwords are still a problem.
How many security breaches could have been avoided by having better passwords?
Quite often it is not even a problem to register an account if you want one. That won't do you any good unless you know any privilege escalation bugs.
Trying to get your way into another regular users account is just an unnecessary step.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

The other problem is that if your computer is compromised the attacker can install a keylogger and get your master key.
Instead of just getting the password to the page you needed to visit they get every password you have in the manager.

If your data isn't airgapped then it relies on the computer you use being completely secure. A password manager isn't that more secure than a text file with the passwords in plain text.
If they get access to the text file they are probably in a position to get your password manager and install a keylogger.

If you want real security you keep the passwords on a device without internet access like a post-it note or a notebook.
Do you want some extra security? You can always obfuscate the passwords and not write down what they are for.
You can also keep it in your wallet. That means that those who can access your password list are the same people that can access your credit card. They will probably go for the latter if they are malicious.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on the situation.
An account shouldn't really be blocked without informing the admin. It's up to him to see what it is all about and unblock it.
The login being blocked for the night while someone is trying to bruteforce it is usually not that big of a deal.

But hey, if you don't like it, only permitting one login per second works too. It still results in the user not being able to login while the attack is ongoing but at least it is self resolving.
Requiring to keep the socket open for that second before the login is permitted could also be neat.
Making the login costly is not a big problem for legit accesses but starts to be costly if you want to do many of them.
If your system supports it you can also reduce the tcp windowsize to 1 for the the login.
An overhead 40 times the data size brings the data needed for bruteforcing up over the gigabyte range pretty quickly.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[CSMoran]

Depends on the situation. An account shouldn't really be blocked without informing the admin. It's up to him to see what it is all about and unblock it. The login being blocked for the night while someone is trying to bruteforce it is usually not that big of a deal.

That's a nice company you've got there. Would be a pity if your admins got swamped with requests to unblock accounts when a botnet in a different country tries 50 passwords for all of your 2000 users.

I think all good solutions to this problem have been found already. When an AC on /. says "obviously, they should just try this", this says more about the AC than the problem.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[markdavis]

+1 informative. Thanks!

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Sarten-X]

Backups, backups, backups.

This is one of the cases where having cloud-synced backups is absolutely wonderful. Even if someone else has access to your password manager's database, it's fully encrypted, and with a decently-strong password (the only one you should ever have to memorize), it'll be safe from brute-force attacks.

I keep my database synced with Google, and open it right from the synced folder. When I change the database, it's immediately backed up, and will sync to my other computers, as well.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I will not dispute that using long passwords is a good practice for a number of reasons, I should point out that if the hash is salted then a long password will not protect you from collisions any more or less than somebody whose password is "1234".

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Sarten-X]

The other problem is that if your computer is compromised the attacker can install a keylogger and get your master key.

You're conflating two different threat models. If your computer is compromised, everything you do from it is already vulnerable, because the malware can adjust what you're seeing and hijack activities as it likes. The attacker can already access your email account, reset service passwords, and do what they like without caring about your old passwords.

To protect against malware, my advice is an antivirus suite (even Windows Defender), pulling updates from the vendor as frequently as possible. Ad-blockers also can preemptively reduce your attack surface, but they are not a substitute for having antivirus running and up-to-date.

Similarly, while an airgap will certainly protect against threats from the other side of the gap, it does not make you immune to threats against your particular threat model. For example, keeping passwords in your wallet means you risk exposure every time you take out your credit card, which has your name on it and is often then handed to someone. If your password card sticks to your credit card, it's a pretty short jump to try that password on Facebook and GMail.

A password manager isn't that more secure than a text file with the passwords in plain text.

A text file is unencrypted, so anyone who gets a copy of the file (such as a PC technician, dumpster-diver, hardware thief, etc.) will have your passwords, with no keylogger or brute-force needed. Even if their intrusion if easily detected (such as your computer no longer being where it was), you have no opportunity to protect your data.

Having an encrypted file also protects you from inadvertent disclosure. Even if, in a hypothetical fit of human stupidity, you email your ex-wife your password database instead of divorce paperwork, there's no chance of (further) damage.

If you want real security you keep the passwords on a device without internet access like a post-it note or a notebook.

A good security system fulfills the C-I-A triad: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. A written password fails all three areas, though it's a less-horrible failure in the "confidentiality" section.

While a notebook is safe from malware or online vulnerabilities, it's not safe from thieves (who are now often just as tech-savvy as you are), curious house guests, evil maids, or snooping coworkers. If you're in a rush for a piece of paper, you could grab that notebook and go out in public carrying your vital passwords openly. Being a physical asset, the notebook itself has to be secured, which is problematic in itself.

A notebook does not really preserve integrity in any way. It's vulnerable to a spilled glass of water, flooding, a tree falling on the roof, fire, insects, and simply wearing out with use. In a few years, it's going to get damaged, and there's no easy way to make backups, without risking extra copies being left floating around.

Finally, a secure notebook is inconvenient. If you're traveling, it's either yet another item to potentially be lost, or it's sitting uselessly at home. It is an interruption to the workflow when you need to log in somewhere, as you have to retrieve the notebook and find the required page. If you keep the notebook in a safe, you have to open the safe to use the notebook - which itself requires its own key.

Re:Is brute-forcing still a thing?

[Sarten-X]

Salting really just makes rainbow tables nearly-useless, but does not impact security against brute-force attacks. A long and unique password is still exponentially more secure than a short one.

For example, let's say I have "1234" as a password. It's wonderfully simple, and shows up in every rainbow table and password list.

I go put that in a service, which adds its own salt of "ABC". Effectively, my password is now "ABC1234", and the salt is stored alongside my password hash.

If an attacker gets that database dump, they can identify that the salt is "ABC", and they can see the password hash. However, they can't use the rainbow table, because the hash for "ABC1234" is wildly different from the hash for "1234". With a salt, the attacker must brute-force the password, but adding "ABC" to the start of all their test strings.

Once an attacker has begun brute-forcing, they're facing a task that very well might not complete before the universe dies. To have any chance of success, they must reduce the scope of work. That means using dictionaries, common password lists (which would definitely include "1234"), and algorithmic weaknesses... but interestingly, collisions don't help terribly much. Since hashing algorithms operate on the whole string, the attacker would need to find a collision for "ABC1234" that also starts with "ABC". That's far less likely, to the point where it is only considered possible for thoroughly broken hash algorithms like MD5.

On top of all that, a salt should be different for each user. My salt might be "ABC", but yours could be "ZYX". All the work the attackers are doing to break my password is totally useless for cracking your password. Even if, while working on my password, they stumble on a hash that matches your password hash, it's useless, because their candidate plaintext will start with my "ABC" salt, not your "ZYX" salt. Now instead of merely having enough work to outlast the universe, they have that much work for each user.

Now, what about length? If all the salt does is force the brute-force approach, the analysis is no different than for an unsalted password where dictionaries and other "cheats" aren't considered. For those cases, there's a simple estimation: For each additional character in the search space, the effort required to exhaustively search is roughly 100 times greater. That means that in the time it takes to brute-force all of the 15-or-less-character passwords, you could try every 14-or-less-character password 100 times.

Now, recall that with salted password hashes, the work must be repeated for each user. For a salted database of 10,000 users, it's roughly the same amount of work to try all 13-or-less-character passwords for every user as it is to try all of the 15-or-less-character passwords for one user. If the passwords were unsalted, the total scale of work would be just that of one user, but it's still easier (and thus more likely) to find shorter passwords.

Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[SuperKendall]

I wouldn't expect intelligence to factor into strength of passwords. Instead, I would expect password strength to correlate to paranoia - people who think it unlikely someone will try to use their account will use a somewhat weak and easy to remember password...

Or maybe it's just that no-one likes using hard passwords and even the paranoid will not bother.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[El Cubano]

I wouldn't expect intelligence to factor into strength of passwords.

I agree with you up to here.

Instead, I would expect password strength to correlate to paranoia - people who think it unlikely someone will try to use their account will use a somewhat weak and easy to remember password...

While I don't specifically disagree with you here, perhaps a better correlation can be found by looking at cognitive burden. That is, while some people likely use the paranoia factor to motivate them to use/remember long and complex passwords, I suspect that most people think along the lines of, "I am just not willing to burden my brain with yet another long and complex password for blah blah blah."

That is not to say that cognitive burden is the only determinant, since things like organizational policy (e.g., in a school or business) might set and enforce minimum complexity with which the user must cope. Rather, in the absence of a forced minimum, users will employ the simpleest password they can comfortably get away with. Where comfortable is different for each individual.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[Black Parrot]

I wouldn't expect intelligence to factor into strength of passwords.

Especially if the strength of a password is defined by whether some random company where you used it got hacked.

Also, if you know it has been exposed, continuing to use it might be a de facto indicator that you're not a bright one.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[Lije Baley]

A similar phenomena would be "security fatigue" -- the sense that it's either all pointless, or that as security measures grow more complicated, the costs exceed the benefits for more and more situations.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[CrimsonAvenger]

That is, while some people likely use the paranoia factor to motivate them to use/remember long and complex passwords, I suspect that most people think along the lines of, "I am just not willing to burden my brain with yet another long and complex password for blah blah blah."

Too true.

Which is why my PasswordSafe remembers all those passwords for me. With two exceptions - my computer and my PasswordSafe. So, I have to remember two (2) "long and complex" passwords while, at the same time, using as many as I'd like....

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[SuperKendall]

While I don't specifically disagree with you here, perhaps a better correlation can be found by looking at cognitive burden

I think this is probably a better take on it than I had. I agree that cognitive load is a large factor on what I personally end up using for password strength, after the fiftieth password you are just like "screw this, using password pattern 1".

things like organizational policy (e.g., in a school or business) might set and enforce minimum complexity

The funny thing about this to me is that it greatly increases cognitive load of passwords, making the password a little stronger because it enforces say a special character, but across the board makes it VASTLY more likely I will choose the same password across multiple sites because otherwise I cannot remember what I chose and don't want to have to think of a new complex password.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[El Cubano]

The funny thing about this to me is that it greatly increases cognitive load of passwords, making the password a little stronger because it enforces say a special character, but across the board makes it VASTLY more likely I will choose the same password across multiple sites because otherwise I cannot remember what I chose and don't want to have to think of a new complex password.

Like many others around here, I use a password manager. So things like every website having a slightly different set of password requirements is nothing more than a minor annoyance to me. However, I can recall before I started using a password manager. It was maddeningly frustrating trying to remember the different policies. One site requires an uppercase, a lowercase, a number, a special character, and a length of 8-20. Another site requires a letter, a number, a special character (but not %, ~, =, or |), and a maximum length 12. Yet another requires an uppercase, a lowercase, does not permit special characters at all, and a minimum length of 12.

With nonsense like that it is impossible, even with a really good mental algorithm for maintaining multiple passwords across multiple sites. If everybody had the same policy, it might work. But as it is, you can basically do one of the following:

• Use same 2 or 3 passwords everywhere (you need at least to 2 or 3 in order to have candidates for the varying complexity policies)
• for infrequently used sites, don't bother remembering the password and go through the reset process every time
• Use a password manager

Only the password manager is remotely secure. The others also do nothing to help with remembering user IDs. You can have your browser remember those and passwords as well. However, that is also a terrible idea for reasons to numerous to list.

Bottom line, with the way things stand today, a password manager is the only viable option for anybody that has even the slightest concern about security.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[PopeRatzo]

I wouldn't expect intelligence to factor into strength of passwords.

You would be correct. I'm probably the smartest person any of you will ever meet, and my password for everything is "passw0rD". See, I changed the "o" to a "0" and made the "d" upper case so that it's impossible to break. Also, because the password nazis insist on my including a number and a mix of upper and lower case.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[Falos]

I advocate passphrases for their reduced burden. Increased complexity will statistically cause a variety of other behaviors. Any low entropy (patternlike) behavior can be emulated, and we spent 10-20 years teaching poorly, increasing the complexity tax for tiny entropy gains.

superman is weak. We get that.
Superman1! is just as weak. Fuck everything that has ever suggested otherwise.
$up3rm@n is almost as bad.
zxcvbnm is not strong. Neither is qrafzvwtsgxb. We see what you did there. Obviously, anything using those patterns is a form of low entropy, with days numbered.

rrrybgdtsmmmmlibad is a nursery rhyme and adds zero (mental recall) burden. Does your kid like Bob the Builder and Spongebob? cwfiwliap. These even dominate the brain tax required by correcthorsebatterystaple, which is frankly a four-letter password in a bigger alphabet, begging for pwning.

It's possible that futuristic tech can be powered by mass dumps (probably lifted from google) of our written text (such that iwtbotiwtwot from dickens or tbontbtitq from shakespeare become weak) but phrases are likely to lean on personal interests, contemporary events/pop culture. Leverage a single unfolding point of mental recall for your brain, not a pile of them. Which are adhering to a heap of rules that will only yield brief, first-derivative resilience.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[CSMoran]

Bottom line, with the way things stand today, a password manager is the only viable option for anybody that has even the slightest concern about security.

What happened to a gool ol' plaintext file with logins and passwords, stored in an encrypted container?

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[SuperKendall]

I don't like password managers...

I've settled on sets of passwords with patterns based on the name of the sites, different patterns for different levels of security (so about three or so possible patterns). I then can have pretty complex passwords with special characters and mixed case, but the passwords are just different enough between sites to foil re-use of the password in a breach. This is a pretty secure setup, almost I would say more secure than a password manager since there is no master password to crack to get a list of all the passwords I have, along with a list of any sites of real interest... I can private browse to my bank for example, someone taking my computer would not even know what my bank was, never mind the password which is stored only in my head.

I do let the browser password manager remember passwords for low-impact sites like Twitter or Slashdot.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to a gool ol' plaintext file with logins and passwords, stored in an encrypted container?

Not sufficiently App-tastic.

Re:Don't look at intelligence, look at paranoia

[j-beda]

I don't like password managers...

I've settled on sets of passwords with patterns based on the name of the sites, different patterns for different levels of security (so about three or so possible patterns). I then can have pretty complex passwords with special characters and mixed case, but the passwords are just different enough between sites to foil re-use of the password in a breach.

That seems pretty good, but maybe the people who write password cracking software use the collected breach data as the starting point for their brute forcing of other websites. If so, then perhaps the patterns that you are using might not give as much protection as you might think. Even unique email addresses/logins for each website might not give much protection if the pattern for creating them is not to hard to discern.

All of this is doubly true if you are being specifically targeted.

Of course being specifically targeted makes it hard to securely use random strings stored in a password manager too.

Balancing reasonable security against reasonable convenience is reasonably challenging.

Look at password rules and if they have 5+ diffent

[Joe_Dragon]

Look at password rules and if they have 5+ different systems to deal with.

Maybe Password Strength should be a Data Point

[TiberiusKirk]

Judge intelligence based on password strength.

Re:Maybe Password Strength should be a Data Point

[ralphsiegler]

no, study only proved the students don't give a shit about the security of their school's email accounts. maybe smart people give even less of a shit about things that are extraneous in life than "normal people"....

Re: Maybe Password Strength should be a Data Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol this. My school account password is super basic, but my computer password is intense AF

Re:Maybe Password Strength should be a Data Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Password strength meters often say my 16-digit random alphanumeric passwords with 95 bits of entropy are only "fair" because they don't contain punctuation.

Password strength meters can go jump in a lake.

Password quality is an irrelevant metric

[bogaboga]

A study carried out at a college in the Philippines shows that students with better grades use bad passwords in the same proportion as students with bad ones.

This conforms that password quality is an irrelevant metric when looking at folks with better grades as compared to those without.

Question though is why they used the Philippines and not the USA, where my bias assumes the USA has more avenues where folks would be exposed to the need of a password [as a percentage] of the whole population.

Re:Password quality is an irrelevant metric

[Sarten-X]

The college that conducted the study is in the Philippines. The experiments were run against the college's student email accounts... which does raise a few easily-dismissed ethical concerns, but I digress...

There's really no reason to assume the USA would be involved at all, other than the reference to NIST, which isn't too surprising. Many places refer to NIST standards, just to avoid a certain standardization problem.

Re:Password quality is an irrelevant metric

[angel'o'sphere]

Most people in "simple countries" like Philippines simply use the "use facebook to log on" option to everything.
As soon as they lose the password they are locked out of everything.
I know dozens of people like that. New mobile phone or SIM card -> new facebook account, and dozens of new other accounts (because you can obviously not log on to the other accounts with your new FB account).

Re:Password quality is an irrelevant metric

[whoever57]

The experiments were run against the college's student email accounts

Did they run a brute force attack against their own email system, or does the college store passwords in plain text?

SuperKendall touched my junk liberally

[Anonymous Coward]

This assumes that higher GPA means smarter. While this may generally be the case, this is far from a foregone conclusion. Smartness or intelligence is a complex subject, and the measurement of intelligence is not something that is trivial and universally accepted. A different study that has access to other measures of intelligence – such as standardized aptitude tests – to combine with GPA may yield further insightful result.

BEST SCAM EVER

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh hey, yeah I think you're really smart, and we're doing a study of smart passwords, yeah that's the ticket. Now, if you'll just write all those down right here on this form.

Re: BEST SCAM EVER

[Bing Tsher E]

The NIST says "send all your users' new passwords to us. So we can check if they are compromised."

Eeehhh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to make a hard to find password... Just take a regular password that someone might use, like "derpface19" and then apply upper cases and special characters to it, while increasing the length, like "D3rPf@c£N|net€eN".

Or really, just use a local password manager to get a unique password for everything and which is kept on an external drive. If someone gets access to your password manager and can crack the encryption, they deserve it.

Re:Look at password rules and if they have 5+ diff

[Sarten-X]

Use a password manager, and you never need to remember what rules were in use where.

They didn't look at intelligence...

[Jon.Burgin]

they looked at grades, which is a dubious measurement of intelligence at best.

Re:They didn't look at intelligence...

[JoeDuncan]

Wish I could mod this up, but I already commented basically the same thing myself...

Re:They didn't look at intelligence...

[freeze128]

Also, "smarter people don't have better passwords" isn't what was measured. "Filipino College students with higher grades don't have better passwords" is really what was measured.

Re:They didn't look at intelligence...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, "smarter people don't have better passwords" isn't what was measured. "Filipino College students with higher grades don't have better passwords" is really what was measured.

I am automagically extremely intelligent and know everything about everything because I post to /. and my passwords are shit... so... the study is accurate

  - A.C.

Life is so much better

[ArhcAngel]

My password predicament went away when I changed all mine to correcthorsebatterystaple !

Idiot Editor

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we can tell the editor is a moron. Grades are only loosely correlated with intelligence. They are a much better measure of self-discipline and long range planning.

smarter?

[markdavis]

>"Smarter People Don't Have Better Passwords, Study Finds"
>"students with better grades use bad passwords in the same proportion as students with bad ones"

Um, students with better grades are not necessarily "smarter." Just saying...

>"because all of these exposed passwords have most likely been added to even the most basic password-guessing brute-forcing tools."

Any system that allows fast, unlimited login attempts (which is necessary for brute force) is BROKEN. Even weak passwords can't be "brute forced" when you only have X attempts in X attempts per minute across X seconds and then that account is locked for X minutes/hours/days.

Re: smarter?

[Bing Tsher E]

Sounds like a creative DoS. Spoof different IPs and spam the login to the site with known accounts. Lock everybody out.

That's useful on poorly set up Windows domains. Is there a public pc somewhere in the building. 'Log on' as you least liked co-worker to get their account locked. IT needs something to do that is less boring than the toner in the LJ4 up on third floor east.

Re: smarter?

[markdavis]

>"Sounds like a creative DoS. Spoof different IPs and spam the login to the site with known accounts. Lock everybody out."

If not carefully set up, you are correct that things like "fail to ban" can, indeed, lead to what is like a denial of service attack. Generally, accounts are not completely locked out, but the IP trying to break in is locked out... for a while, at least. An account lockout would only occur on some configurations, perhaps if it is being sensed as being attacked from many different IP addresses within some amount of time. IP's can also be blocked if they were recently used to try and login to more than X number of accounts.

Verifying breach status

[omnichad]

verifying if the password is also listed in previous public breaches

So does NIST recommend maintaining an offline archive of every breach ever or are they recommending you transmit the password in cleartext to a 3rd party?

Re:Verifying breach status

[Anonymous Coward]

The offline archive of every breach ever (well, the hashes and frequency of use of all of those compromised passwords) already exists. And you can download all the hashes for use in checking the passwords of your users. It's "only" about nine gigabytes.

https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords

The previous has been a public service message.

Re:Verifying breach status

[omnichad]

9GB for every project is a bit much.

Better Grade != Smarter

[AnthonywC]

This study just shows that people with better grades doesn't necessarily use better password; nothing more or less.

Smart people are different

[swell]

... than the 'other' people. Smart people tend to think for themselves, to ignore common beliefs and behaviors. Smart people are like cats who are difficult to herd. If the gospel among computer users is to have an obscure password, smart people will question that and may do so only for special accounts.

The 'other' people, OTOH, tend to do as they are told, to follow the rules, to behave themselves. If they are told to use safe passwords, and they can remember that rule, they will make some effort to do so. Those 'other' people are like dogs- they will do as told if they understand and remember the rules. We all like dogs, but not everyone likes those smartass cats.

Re:Smart people are different

[skoskav]

Smart people are also able to parse a particular field's body of knowledge and realize their own limitations, and know when and why to concede to a consensus of experts -- otherwise you get flat-Earthers.

Re:Smart people are different

[Anonymous Coward]

smart people will question that and may do so only for special accounts.

Yep, only the critical accounts get the fancy passwords and all those inconsequential ones get the easy password. Like I give much of a damn if someone could get into those accounts that are just for posting comments.

Re:Smart people are different

[Anonymous Coward]

If the experts are someone like Bruce Schneier, sure.

But if the "experts" are someone like the guy who recently admitted that the standard password policy recommendations (expire after 3 months and all that) were something he pulled out of his ass...

People doing such surveys are *usually* not able to tell the difference.

Re:Smart people are different

[brewthatistrue]

> the guy who recently admitted that the standard password policy recommendations (expire after 3 months and all that) were something he pulled out of his ass...

paywalled article...

The Man Who Wrote Those Password Rules Has a New Tip: N3v$r M1^d!
Bill Burr’s 2003 report recommended using numbers, obscure characters and capital letters and updating regularly—he regrets the error
By Robert McMillan
Aug. 7, 2017 12:41 p.m. ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...

via

https://it.slashdot.org/story/...

some other coverage from the time:

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/p...
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.c...

Studies show

[Anonymous Coward]

Studies also show that TFS submitters don't know when to not stick apostrophes into words. For example in this TFS it is studies not study's because they are not talking about things belonging to the studies. I guess this proves that smarter people don't do Slashdot TFS submissions?

Upload my password to check it

[Anonymous Coward]

Passwords are a braindead concept, so there's no surprise that intelligent people don't have better passwords. With all the "good password" rules that get ignored, most password breaches are still not caused by the user but on the other side of the screen. I would not be surprised to read that some site's passwords got compromised because they sent them to a phishing site that pretends to check if a password has been leaked.

Re:Look at password rules and if they have 5+ diff

[Anonymous Coward]

That can still create havoc when having to make a new password. I've been to some sites that only allow certain non-alphanumeric characters, then there are ones that don't allow three of the same character anywhere in the password string, even if it's 20 characters. I've yet to see a password manager that can generate some passwords based on these asinine rules.

Well we know liberals are all about touching junk

[SuperKendall]

This assumes that higher GPA means smarter

That's a pretty excellent point really, the ability to get good grades is possibly an indicator of intelligence, but I don't think lack of good grades is a negative indicator for intelligence... I seem to remember reading lots of really intelligent people got bad grades, in part because they were bored or grades were not what they cared about in studying.

you don't have to think to get good PWs

[Anonymous Coward]

$ pwgen -s 20

That is all.

At one job I had a 20 character password...

[Anonymous Coward]

The one I got assigned by default from corporate was ridiculously easy to break with John the Ripper and an update password list. Due to this, I changed the password to a unique 20 characters which would have been next to impossible to break using today's technology.

Less than 9 weeks pass and I receive the automated e-mail that forces you to change your e-mail. Genius!

After that I just used the original password they gave me and incremented it by one - EVERY time they sent me another e-mail to change it.

Why even bother trying when idiots run the show.

Re:At one job I had a 20 character password...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. change your password.

Re:At one job I had a 20 character password...

[Larry Lightbulb]

At one place, about 25 years ago, the passwords were automatically generated every month but because they were complicated they were printed out and left on your desk.

So the NIST is compiling a list?

[Bing Tsher E]

Let me get this straight. So the NIST is saying that when a new user creates an account on a site, that site should immediately shuffle a copy of that password off to another site where it can be compared tona list of passwords on that site.

That sounds a little shitty. When I sign up for an account somewhere, the password I create and give them shouldn't be passed around to other entities. It sounds like a great opportunity for somebody building a password dictionary to log a copy of everything that's being sent to that site.

What is a better password?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting to ask just how good a password needs to be this year. Cracking a password involves computing many hashes, and because of bitcoin, specialized hardware exists to do this very very quickly. For example, there is AntMiner 9 that does 14TH/s while consuming 1.3kW. It will not, of course, crack passwords, but we can probably assume that similar hardware exists on the black market that can. So, how long does your password need to be to counter threats like this?

An average identity theft results in $1343 in profit for the thief. A thief equipped with AntMiner9-equivalent hardware will be able to run it for about a year at current electricity prices. A year is about 2^25 seconds. 14TH is approximately 2^44, 44 bits. Together that's 69 bits of password strength required before a brute force attack becomes unprofitable.

According to wikipedia's password strength table, 69 bits can be achieved with 11 character case sensitive alphanumeric + symbols password. With single-case alphanumeric, 14 characters would be needed.

So, how many of you smart ones use a password this long on some random website? What, nobody? Of course not. Nobody will be able to remember many 14 character passwords. Use a password manager! Don't let your friends use the web without a password manager!

Re:What is a better password?

[hyades1]

If you're bright enough to write a poem like "Jabberwocky", and include even of your own custom-made words, you can very easily have a password far longer than 14 characters that's perfectly easy to remember.

Here's an example:

"Anonymous" and "Coward"

Words identifying fools

Known for sloping, apelike foreheads

Also noseflaps shaped like tools

But at least...

[XSportSeeker]

...it helps writting titles that actually do reflect studies.
Better grades is not the same as being "smarter".

Re:But at least...

[JoeDuncan]

Ha! Just posted the same damn thing LOL

Re:Well we know liberals are all about touching ju

[Anonymous Coward]

I got fairly good grades, As and some Bs. I'm also pretty intelligent. Unfortunately, I'm also fairly lazy in a lot of ways. For whatever reason, if I could easily get good enough, I have never really had the motivation to push for the best.

Sure, I sometimes am the best at some given thing and at work I do a great job but by the same token, have zero interest in going into management (learned 10 years ago that I hate managing people that can't be bothered to try or even care and way to many people fit the bill) and so I therefore stay in my position. I'm happy with my pay and benefits.

I also own a townhouse but have no yard. Making the push to the house level would require my wife and I to earn an additional 30k a year between us and I just can't find the motivation to really push for it.

TLDR: Just because you are intelligent doesn't mean you'll be extremely successful in life.

Bad assumption!

[JoeDuncan]

Better grades != smarter

The only thing that correlates highly with "better grades" is *effort*, not intelligence.

You might need to read about rainbow tables

[raymorris]

> Read about rainbow tables

Good advice. You should take that advice. Maybe even try using one.

Let's look at your claim regarding the length of the password. Back in the early 1990s, MD5 was the recommended algorithm. It had a short 128-bit hash. That's roughly the same entropy as an 18-20 character password. As long as two passwords were both at least 20 characters, a longer password wasn't better because they'd both get reduced to a 128-bit hash anyway. By the late 1990s weaknesses had been found in MD5 and we started recommending SHA-1 instead. I personally distributed sample code showing how to convert your MD5 password hashes to SHA1, something that sounds impossible at first.

Then about 15 years ago MD5 was completely broken. Anyone with a clue moved to SHA1 or, later, SHA2. IF your web application is using an algorithm that has been broken for 15 years, AND your pass is at least 20 characters, longer than 20 isn't much more secure.

You might be thinking "there is a four character password with the same hash". No, there isn't, in all likelihood. There are very few 4-character passwords, and very many possible 128-bit hashes. For any given long password, there probably is no short password with the same hash.

SHA-1 is a 160-bit hash. It's even less likely that a short password of say 36 bits entropy is going to have the same 160-bit hash as a longer password. ALL possible 36-bit passwords combined only cover 1/2^124 of the outputs. In other words, the odds against getting a match, even trying ALL of the short passwords, are far less than the odds that you will win the lottery without even playing, by finding a winning ticket.

SHA-2 came out in 2001. There are no rainbow tables for SHA2, because the key space is too large. So if your application has been *properly* updated in the last 10-15 years, rainbow tables simply do not apply.

Re:Look at password rules and if they have 5+ diff

[MAXOMENOS]

I've run into that....sometimes it means I have to change my rules, and sometimes I can only get the rules so close and have to make multiple attempts.

And sometimes I get websites that won't let me paste in my password. Because apparently it's still 2004 wherever they live.

Smarter people don't have better passwords

[DontBeAMoran]

What's wrong with "54321EGAGGUL"?

Re:Smarter people don't have better passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

Luggage 12345

Re:Smarter people don't have better passwords

[Anonymous Coward]

"Observant, aren't we? Are you a detective?" -Stewie Griffin

stupid, in a specific way

[epine]

This is completely stupid.

I once got a B+ in my advanced-stream, enriched introduction to calculus course, so I guess my standard 11–15 character passwords (seeded from the OpenBSD apg utility) count toward the B Ark's less-than-entirely-lame password rating.

But I guess I was pretty stupid after all, because just about any other course would have been less difficult to complete with a big fat A.

But then again, only because I effed myself to take the hard road did I gain a full and proper understanding of Simpson's paradox (apparently this is a high achievement in life, because on a straw poll I seem to be a member of a select few).

Simpson's Paradox and Statistical Urban Legends: Gender Bias at Berkeley — 8 May 2016

Simpson's Paradox has fooled many. In the fall of 1973, for instance, the University of California, Berkeley's graduate division admitted about 44% of male applicants and 35% of female applicants. That raised eyebrows among school officials, who feared bias and asked Peter Bickel, now a professor emeritus of statistics at Berkeley, to analyze the data.

"Smart" not the same as "Wise"

[Maxo-Texas]

Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do.

IQ is then figuring how to do it effectively.

Not news. Richard Feynman mentioned it.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Richard Feynman, in his book Surely you are joking, Mr Feynman mentioned how he cracked the safe of a famous scientist.

He was working in the Manhatten project making the first atom bomb. Place was teeming with top physicists absent minded professors and was run by the Army that had safes allocated to all top scientists. After a long and interesting story about how he got into safe cracking, he mentioned: He was challenged to crack the safe of Niel Bohr or Oppenheimer. He did it in less than two minutes. Asked how, he replied, "Physicists always use 3141, 1414, 1783, or 2245 as the code". They are PI, sqrt(2), sqrt(3), sqrt(5)

Re:Not news. Richard Feynman mentioned it.

[WallyL]

I always use sqrt(1) as my password.

Better grades does NOT mean smarter

[mysidia]

The headline said: Smarter People Don't Have Better Passwords, Study Finds

The summary said: students with better grades use bad passwords in the same proportion as students with bad ones.

Counterpoint: Better grades are not a measure of "smartness" or intelligence --- Grades are a course-specific measure of performance in class on typically assignments and tests which are bound to frequently have some level of instructor subjectivity embedded into the result: At the very least in advanced subjects, the instructors tends to chooses to emphasize some topics on exams and are bound to leave out other topics, some students are more concerned about learning than grinding specific instructor-emphasized line items for high grades in particular classes and may spend more time deepening their knowledge of material in depth and breadth, so by being less concerned about gaming grading results to ensure an A they actually learn a lot more from the course of study than the A student but perhaps get a B or C, because they weren't hammering flash cards on the small selection of topics the professor wants them to answer on a high-stakes time limited exam or narrow-deadline assignment, And grade are affected by things that don't necessarily equate to a student being smart or not.... some of the prodigies that started the tech revolution were college dropouts or got bad scores, so high grades don't equate to intelligence, they never did

Secondly.... General intelligence and Security-Awareness / security-specific intelligence may be correlated weakly but less so than one would expect with general good grades

Re:Better grades does NOT mean smarter

[RhettLivingston]

Grades are also measures of conformance and memory which are both actually crutches that can reduce the degree of developed intelligence.

It is interesting that the only intelligence required here is the intelligence to know that memorable passwords are a security risk in general and that proper password security requires the use of a well-protected password vault and automatic password generator so that no compromised site will ever reveal the password you've used on any other site.

âoeSo the combination is 1-2-3-4-5?â

[Anonymous Coward]

âoeThatâ(TM)s AMAZING, Iâ(TM)ve got the SAME combination on my luggage!!â

Smarter ppl

[Anonymous Coward]

Figured that most it services don't matter.

Re:Look at password rules and if they have 5+ diff

[Sarten-X]

I use KeePass personally, and its built-in password generator has the following options:

• Upper case
• Lower case
• Digits
• Minus
• Underline
• Space
• Special (!, $, %, &, ...)
• Brackets
• High ANSI characters
• A custom set of user-defined characters, which would meet your "certain non-alphanumeric" rule example

It also has options to only allow characters to appear once at most, forbid look-alike characters like "O" and "0", and simple prohibit certain characters.

Smart is

[Anonymous Coward]

Smarter People Don't ...

... remember random letters any better than dull people. Smart people don't know which passwords are compromised and probably don't know such a list exists. Smart is mixing letters and digits (mandatory for most log-ins), not re-using passwords and using a(n) (off-line) password manager.

Based on a flawed premise.

[Anonymous Coward]

The actual issue is that a college in the Philippines believes that smarter people get better grades. More diligent and better organized students get better grades, not smarter ones.

Password policies

[Anonymous Coward]

A major problem is that there is a lot of misinformation about what is a good password, and a lot off password policies based on said misinformation.

When people are prevented from using a good password, they'll often just throw in the towel and use one of the standard crappy passwords that every password policy allows.

Test for yourself. Does the password policy at your place of work / school allow "correct horse battery stable"? Does it allow "Summer2018"?

Most systems would consider the first "too weak" (it's only weakness is that it's the standard example of a good password), while the accepting the second one (probably the worst password ever[1]).

[1] Yes, it's worse that "batman". Because you don't know if they used "batman", "superman", "spiderman" or any of the other choices. Where as anyone using "Summer2018" is probably doing so because the system requires changing the password every three months, so you know they'll be using either "Spring2018" or "Summer2018" depending on whether they just changed their password or they need to do it soon.

Amusing assumption

[GeekWithAKnife]

When you have good test scores; in math, in literature, sports or IQ tests you have proven you are highly motivated to score well. It is not proof of intelligence.

There is a fair amount of highly intelligent people that are demotivated and will not apply themselves in a manner that is often expected in today's society.

The real challenge for educators, parents, friends and managers that know demotivated intelligent people is to help them get that spark to apply themselves.

It is perhaps unthinkable that one could achieve so much and yet not bother; and indeed it is suggestive that such behaviour is not intelligent...yet without a reward, a satisfaction of sorts there is little motivation to act.

I hope I have captured your attention if ever so briefly and ask that if it's work, grades, personal relationships or very good computer security and so on; that you find your motivation/satisfaction to apply yourself in some way today.

Wrong headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the numbers, it is clear that students with higher GPA (dubiously dubbed "smarter people") do have better passwords. The difference is 7 percent points which (without having done the math) seems significant to me. It's even reflected in the title of the fucking paper: Do Smarter People Have Better Passwords? Yes, But... How do you go from "yes but" to "no"? Via pop sci journalism.

"smarter"

[Anonymous Coward]

Implying that smarter people grades is kind of silly imo

Not all passwords are equal

[OneHundredAndTen]

Many sites require for you to register because they can. For such sites, which will contain nothing but spoofed information about me, I couldn't care less about the strength of my password.

Hashes: ...and still very breakable.

[DrYak]

Yes, I get your point.
- Parent poster points about rainbow table (tables that point hashes back to strings that can generate the same hash).
- You point that a well designed (=non borked design) hashing function should give two different hash for two dissimilar short passwords. Thus you would need a giant rainbow table that gives a password for *every single possible 160bit hash* (that's ~10^48 entries, i.e.: within an order or two from the number of atoms on earth). Fat chance.

BUT!
Even if the hash->password direction is *hard*.
password->hash direction is easy.

All the algorithm you mention (MD5, SHA1, SHA2 and let's throw SHA3/KECCAK in the mix too) are all extremely *fast hasing functions* (They are ultra fast, and have very low ressource requirement by design).
Meaning you can take a GPU running a special compute shader/OpenCL/Cuda code that can process millions of them in a second.
So you could scan through ALL the common password (based on frequent leaked passwords and/or on frequent paterns, etc. and their substitutions) within a reasonable time until you find a match.
As the summary points out, we humans are bad at picking-up password, we definitely use less than 2^ ${whatever bits used by current popular hash} different passwords.
Even if you use salt (so your hash doesn't match any other precedent hash in any rainbow table), and even if you use the latest *hashing* function (SHA3 - well okay, it's a sponge function, but basically works the same), it's definitely within the reach of a reasonable budget to loan GPU compute time on the cloud and brute force the passwords.

So if a database containing SHA{n}-hashed (and optionally salted) passwords get leaked, you can consider that all except the most unusual passwords can be brute-forced.

So in short DO NOT USE HASHES. USE KEY DERIVATION FUNCTIONS.

Things like bcrypt, scrypt or the current competition winner argon2, are on purpose designed to be slow and resource intensive.
(By iterating multiple rounds, by require significant memory, etc.)
For you, it doesn't change much if loging in take now a third of a second - you only log once, after all, it won't kill you to wait for 300ms just once at the beginning of your session.
But for potential brute-forcers, not being able to quickly go through million of tests is suddenly a huge blocker.

So in short :
do NOT use SHA2 for your password database.
use bcrypt/scrypt/argon2 instead.

bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Should read: Smarter Philippine College Students Don't Have Better Passwords, Study Finds

Maybe all college students, regardless of country, choose bad passwords.

Why the link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Silly premise. I wouldn't have made the link between "being smart" and using "better" passwords.

I would attribute this instead to 2 things:

a) The individual's perceived value of the item being password-protected
b) Whether said individual's ever had important data stolen before

Agree with your conclusion. A little more info

[raymorris]

> do NOT use SHA2 for your password database.
use bcrypt/scrypt/argon2 instead.

Brypt is indeed designed as a *password* hashing function, so it's better for passwords than sha-2 is. I think sha-2 is also acceptable.

> Thus you would need a giant rainbow table that gives a password for *every single possible 160bit hash

That's actually the difference between a rainbow table and a simple lookup table. The rainbow table can be as big or small as you want. Larger tables allow faster "unhashing". While BUILDING the rainbow table, you have to compute all* the hashes, but not save the results.

> So you could scan through ALL the common password (based on frequent leaked passwords

Definitely don't use a common password. Using "password" as your password will suck no matter what else you do. Therefore it's a mistake to say:
Doing X won't help if the passwords suck. Therefore don't do X.
Because we know weak passwords will be weak no matter what you do, it probably makes sense to try to make the system as secure as possible +for users who use good passwords+.

/.er vs normal people

[DrYak]

Answer trashed by miss-typing, I'll try to rewrite my reply again.

Brypt is indeed designed as a *password* hashing function, so it's better for passwords than sha-2 is. I think sha-2 is also acceptable.

Bcrypt, Scrypt, Argon2 (and the older PBKDF2, for completeness) were all designed for password and are designed with resistance to bruteforce in mind.
sha{n} family were designed for speed (and sha-3/keccak also because a sponge function is an interesting new concept) and are only acceptable if you don't mind brute forcing.

Definitely don't use a common password. Using "password" as your password will suck no matter what else you do. Therefore it's a mistake to say:
Doing X won't help if the passwords suck. Therefore don't do X.

The problem isn't simply people using "password" or "123456" for password. The problem is general approach to security.
We human suck at picking strong purely random password.

We /. geeks, will probably pipe a decent (more than 256) amount from /dev/random (not even the 'u' one! with several true random source mixed into the kernel entropy pool !!!) through base64, and use the output for only 1 specific site, and store it into a decent opensource password manager, that backs up on our own cloud.
We also activate two-factor authentication whenever possible (using an OTP app, not insecure channels like SMS).
That thing is pretty much secure. Even with a fast hash, it's not realistic to brute force. And in case of a database leak, an attacker wouldn't gain much, until the leak is discovered, they'll only could try to log into that specific site and they'll still will be missing the 2FA.

Normal people don't do that. They seldom activate two-factor authentication (it's too cumbersome).
And when asked to pick a password, they tend to follow pattern.
Most frequently, they will put the required capital letter at the beginning, use a 5-6 letter combo, followed by 2-4 of the required digit, and put an "!" at the end to the mandatory punctuation sign.
Such a password follows the most stringent rules nearly everywhere. It will show a green light on most password strength evaluation.
But do the math : such a password, in best case (6 letter, 4 digits. The position of the capitalisation at the beginning and the "!" at the end don't bring much as they are predictable) has less than 42 bits of entropy. Collect all the other common patterns, allow for a few extra substitution, and you'd probably still be within 56bits, something that isn't considered secure at all nowadays.
Using these pattern, if a database using only slat+fast hashes is leaked, you can recover a very sizeable fraction of all the password within. (Not all password. There's bound to be two or three of /. geeks crowd using /dev/random. But almost all the others).

Worse, lots of people have a tendency to re-use passwords (out of convenience, it's hard to remember "good" passwords).
Once a database is leaked and passwords recovered, a sizeable amount of these password could be used to open other stuff (Access the e-mail account associated with that user's database record ? (and once logged in, try to use the "reset password" function of any website associated with this e-mail ?) Try to log into several social network website using the same e-mail and password ? etc.)

In short, it's not only people using "password" and "123456", it's every body who is not using /dev/[u]random (the biggest fraction of your userbase)

Because we know weak passwords will be weak no matter what you do, it probably makes sense to try to make the system as secure as possible +for users who use good passwords+.

On the other hand because we know very few users will use purely random password + a password manager, and activate two-factor authentication, it makes sense to try to make a potential database leak as resistant to brute-forcing as possible.
Specially because it only costs us a few hundreds of milliseconds and a little bit more RAM once at the beginning of a session, during the log-in phase.

Amateur!

[Anonymous Coward]

REAL scientists use sqrt(-1)