You are correct, as was I-- for just 2 characters, mixed case + numbers provides more security. Adding 3 characters rather than mixed case theoretically is better-- but if it results in a dictionary word, it is far far worse. Numbers + mixed case help mitigate dictionaries quite a bit.
Additionally, lowercase only rainbow tables are going to be more common than mixed-case, since mixed case tables are much larger (2^n larger where n is length).
Except complaining about getting carted off to the Gulag in the US doesnt raise awareness, it just makes everyone think youre a nutcase who lacks perspective.
If you want to raise awareness about the worst parts of government try, I dont know, complaining about actual, real problems.
I really love Steam. I can't recount the number of times someone broke into my house, stole my entire game library, AND my credit card, and then used my credit card to buy tons of other games on it,
Are you saying thats happened? The article doesnt mention that. They mention an intrusion where nothing seems to have been taken, things were properly salted and encrypted, and the issue was noticed quickly.
If you have contrary evidence, Im sure it would make a good news story, you should probably report it.
General rules are: Mixed case/numbers/symbols all make them hard to crack but not as much as making them longer.
Wrong, unless you are talking really short passwords, in which case youre REALLY wrong.
For starters, lower case, 5-character passwords have 11million possibilities. A 4 character, mixed case alphanumeric has 14million. As you add characters, the difference widens.
And for the SHORT passwords, there are already rainbow tables for lowercase-only up to 7 characters widely available. Mixed alphanumeric are harder to find and generate, and if you add symbols, rainbow tables start to become worthless. Additionally, when you have that short of a password, it is generally HIGHLY susceptable to dictionary attacks if it is single case alpha-only.
You want a good password? Go for one or two characters shorter (assuming you have more than 8 characters), and add one or two character classes instead-- preferably a non-standard symbol like alt+15 or alt+21 (which work in most scenarios, and are unlikely to be in a hacker's scope).
Because when Sony was hacked, NOT ONLY were they offline for a month, and NOT ONLY were their restoration estimates wildly inaccurate, but additionally they were storing data either unencrypted or weakly encrypted, so that the upshot was 62+million records were compromised.
In this situation, the data seems to have been well protected so that they simply need to make sure no "gifts" were left by the intrusion, and run an audit on their network. They dont need to, for example, buy 1 year of crappy credit protection for all of their customers.
Incidentally, I think Sony's followup to the hack was pretty good, though it doesnt really excuse the mess they caused. Compensation for downtime? Check. Credit protection (albeit only for a year)? Check. Free games, and other goodies? Check.
In a lot of ways, these scenarios show the worst, and the best, of capitalism. Sometimes it leads to short-sighted cost-saving; but at the end of the day the corporation is beholden to its customers, and as we saw (with sony) and are seeing now, the corporations will work REALLY hard to win back your favor if they screw up. And in this situation, I dont think theres evidence yet to suggest endemic lax security at valve-- it could very well be an admin whose password was weak or who wrote it down.
Yes, look at all those Occupy folks we're carting off to internment camps.
I suppose if you wanted to be really ridiculous you could show me a handful who got arrested for actually breaking the law, and call that free speech supression....
Way to ignore the last part of my post. I have no problem with someone talking about the very real issues we have, but when you go off the deep end comparing us to China, you kill productive discussion and any shred of credibility you had.
If you want real change to occur, you have to start by making sure youre sure the complaints made are legitimate. Noone will rally to you if you claim things here are as bad as Nazi Germany or North Korea or whatever, because they know youre full of crap.
And the no-oversight guarenteed constant wiretapping, data interception, and potential SSL spoofing, and the requirement of a Government ID to purchase a SIM card, and the requirement of a "business reason" to purchase a business internet line, and the strict regulation of travel between provinces, and the threat of all that you mentioned merely for protesting the government,...
Yea, other than all that, theyre totally similar. Both have governments and everything.
Go back to basically any period of time WW2 or earlier, and he would be considered a spy. Manning would have already been hung, if this were the Revolutionary War.
Hes not a US citizen, but he is harming its interests by releasing diplomatic cables, especially when there is no crime to reveal. Regardless, no charges have been filed against Assange, and the US has made no extradition request (despite there being a treaty in place with the UK), so your point doesnt hold any water. Politicians foaming at the mouth and making inflamatory statements about shooting him dont represent the stance of the government.
I would say that High-tech is what corporations do best, not us. Remember the corporation is only here because it's convenient to them; there's no "Magic Western Civilization Fairy" keeping them here. China could replace us,
All of the top microprocessor firms are US-based: Intel, AMD, the former ATI, nVidia. All of the top router companies are US-based: Cisco, Juniper (Alcatel-Lucent is also western, but based in France). All of the major OS efforts are based in the west: BSD, Linux, Windows, Unix, OSX-- all came out of the west, and the biggest of those on a consumer level (Windows, OSX) are both US based. All of the major web browsers, and the major plugins (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Flash, Silverlight, Java, Quicktime) are US based (only Opera is from outside the US, and that too is western).
I could go on and on. You say theres nothing keeping them here, but here they were founded and here they stay. There are a few in the east, but by and large they are in South Korea or Japan, which are quite western.
They are growing, and perhaps they will continue to do so until they too are major world innovators, but pretending that they are NOW is just not true.
I don't trust any telecomminucations company to be honest- but I see no reason why to distrust China Telecom more.
Because with Chinese ISPs, its not a "if the proper paperwork is filed and you are suspicious, you will be monitored" situation; its a "if you are connected, everything you do is sent to the CCP servers".
I was just over there briefly, the degree of monitoring there is creepy. It results in a wonderful tourist destination, actually, because you will never find traffic blocked by a protest-- protests are quickly rounded up and ushered away. Trying to shout anti-government slogans, or distribute literature? Quickly silenced.
I think it would be absolutely foolish to trust them, especially given how much spying China does, and the likelyhood that they have forged SSL certs. The ONLY way I would consider using them is if I had my router permenantly VPN'd to a proper US ISP endpoint.
You may or may not be on the mark with the other examples (free speech zones make sense intellectually, but they still reek and I hate the thought of them), but this:
The mess over WikiLeaks.
Is ridiculous. Theres no "new direction" with wikileaks; at any time in history, if a citizen was caught doing the stuff that was done with wikileaks he would have been arrested for treason / espionage, and either hung or shot depending on the era.
The state has ALWAYS recognized the need for SOME secrets, and while you can debate whether or not we have too many now, releasing a whole boatload of diplomatic cables would ALWAYS have pissed the hell out of the US government. Diplomacy often requires some degree of secrecy unfortunately, and undermining diplomatic efforts isnt going to result in an indifferent US gov't.
China is a whole different ballgame, and youre naieve if you think otherwise. Try this test-- you and a buddy each get a cellphone, you in the US, him in China. You place a call to him, and start discussing the need for revolution in each country to fix its evils.
Then see who gets picked up and sent to a labor camp first. Bonus points if your friend is a chinese citizen.
I get that the US has problems, and (though Im still skeptical and wary of all the wild claims made about the state of interception here) I dont doubt that the FBI and NSA have some rather scary capabilities. But in the US they STILL have about a zillion hoops to jump through to monitor someone, theyre STILL subject to some degree of oversight, and they STILL respect the ability of a citizen to decry their own government (I dare you to find a citizen who was honest-to-goodness incarcerated for protesting the government here).
None of that applies in China, they can pick you up for no reason and put you in a labor camp for two years (minus a day) with no trial and no judicial oversight, release you for a day, and then pick you up again. They can, have, and do incarcerate people for simply demanding change. If an Occupy Shanghai movement started up, it would be about 5 hours before there was military rounding all the folks up and shipping them to Inner Mongolia for some ReEducation by Labor.
So sure, complain about the faults in our system, its what makes us stronger. But comparing us to China? "Youre out of your element, Donny".
They cant STIFLE free speech in the US; youre thinking in the wrong direction. However, China IS known to monitor every phone call, every website visit, etc that occurs in China, and youd be a fool to purchase a line from China Telecom and expect anything less than a malicious backstabbing MITM on every connection you make.
The problem is that it flat out doesnt work in reality. Why dont we give Iran and Israel both all our top military and nuclear tech? Im sure that middle east problem will resolve itself.
Or why dont we make all diplomatic talks with China or N Korea public? Why didnt we make public all of the intel ops surrounding the Bin Laden strike? Why not have all our advisors tell the world what they think regarding Greece's situation, Im sure THAT wont hurt markets. Why not have the nuclear launch codes be public, since they technically belong to the public?
It sounds great, until reality intrudes, and you realize that for all the problems with TOO much secrecy, none whatsoever isnt much of an improvement.
Thatll show them for using diplomacy instead of just bombing the shit out of people!! Diplomatic wires want to be free! Incarcerate Tsvingerai! Free Zimbabwe!
And saying "damage will be irreversable in x years" for the last nX years creates a serious problem for credibility.
The world would be a lot better if people could lay the facts bare without hyperbole and exaggeration; but of course that neither makes headlines nor gets attention.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it was.
8-length mixed alphanumeric=2.18 *10^14 (218 trillion)
8 length lower case= 2.08 * 10^11 (208 billion)
9 length lowercase = 5.4 * 10^12 (5 trillion)
You are correct, as was I-- for just 2 characters, mixed case + numbers provides more security. Adding 3 characters rather than mixed case theoretically is better-- but if it results in a dictionary word, it is far far worse. Numbers + mixed case help mitigate dictionaries quite a bit.
Additionally, lowercase only rainbow tables are going to be more common than mixed-case, since mixed case tables are much larger (2^n larger where n is length).
Except complaining about getting carted off to the Gulag in the US doesnt raise awareness, it just makes everyone think youre a nutcase who lacks perspective.
If you want to raise awareness about the worst parts of government try, I dont know, complaining about actual, real problems.
I really love Steam. I can't recount the number of times someone broke into my house, stole my entire game library, AND my credit card, and then used my credit card to buy tons of other games on it,
Are you saying thats happened? The article doesnt mention that. They mention an intrusion where nothing seems to have been taken, things were properly salted and encrypted, and the issue was noticed quickly.
If you have contrary evidence, Im sure it would make a good news story, you should probably report it.
General rules are: Mixed case/numbers/symbols all make them hard to crack but not as much as making them longer.
Wrong, unless you are talking really short passwords, in which case youre REALLY wrong.
For starters, lower case, 5-character passwords have 11million possibilities. A 4 character, mixed case alphanumeric has 14million. As you add characters, the difference widens.
And for the SHORT passwords, there are already rainbow tables for lowercase-only up to 7 characters widely available. Mixed alphanumeric are harder to find and generate, and if you add symbols, rainbow tables start to become worthless. Additionally, when you have that short of a password, it is generally HIGHLY susceptable to dictionary attacks if it is single case alpha-only.
You want a good password? Go for one or two characters shorter (assuming you have more than 8 characters), and add one or two character classes instead-- preferably a non-standard symbol like alt+15 or alt+21 (which work in most scenarios, and are unlikely to be in a hacker's scope).
Because when Sony was hacked, NOT ONLY were they offline for a month, and NOT ONLY were their restoration estimates wildly inaccurate, but additionally they were storing data either unencrypted or weakly encrypted, so that the upshot was 62+million records were compromised.
In this situation, the data seems to have been well protected so that they simply need to make sure no "gifts" were left by the intrusion, and run an audit on their network. They dont need to, for example, buy 1 year of crappy credit protection for all of their customers.
Incidentally, I think Sony's followup to the hack was pretty good, though it doesnt really excuse the mess they caused. Compensation for downtime? Check. Credit protection (albeit only for a year)? Check. Free games, and other goodies? Check.
In a lot of ways, these scenarios show the worst, and the best, of capitalism. Sometimes it leads to short-sighted cost-saving; but at the end of the day the corporation is beholden to its customers, and as we saw (with sony) and are seeing now, the corporations will work REALLY hard to win back your favor if they screw up. And in this situation, I dont think theres evidence yet to suggest endemic lax security at valve-- it could very well be an admin whose password was weak or who wrote it down.
No, which is why I used the key words "citizen", and "espionage". Citizens get charged with treason, Assange would be charged with espionage.
Yes, look at all those Occupy folks we're carting off to internment camps.
I suppose if you wanted to be really ridiculous you could show me a handful who got arrested for actually breaking the law, and call that free speech supression....
Way to ignore the last part of my post. I have no problem with someone talking about the very real issues we have, but when you go off the deep end comparing us to China, you kill productive discussion and any shred of credibility you had.
If you want real change to occur, you have to start by making sure youre sure the complaints made are legitimate. Noone will rally to you if you claim things here are as bad as Nazi Germany or North Korea or whatever, because they know youre full of crap.
And the no-oversight guarenteed constant wiretapping, data interception, and potential SSL spoofing, and the requirement of a Government ID to purchase a SIM card, and the requirement of a "business reason" to purchase a business internet line, and the strict regulation of travel between provinces, and the threat of all that you mentioned merely for protesting the government,...
Yea, other than all that, theyre totally similar. Both have governments and everything.
I use the app :( the search and labels features were kind of nice....
Go back to basically any period of time WW2 or earlier, and he would be considered a spy. Manning would have already been hung, if this were the Revolutionary War.
Hes not a US citizen, but he is harming its interests by releasing diplomatic cables, especially when there is no crime to reveal. Regardless, no charges have been filed against Assange, and the US has made no extradition request (despite there being a treaty in place with the UK), so your point doesnt hold any water. Politicians foaming at the mouth and making inflamatory statements about shooting him dont represent the stance of the government.
You mean the Maglev that was constructed by Siemens? Yea, thats totally Chinese technology.
You will find that most of the best examples of technology in China are either based off of western tech, or implemented by western companies.
I would say that High-tech is what corporations do best, not us. Remember the corporation is only here because it's convenient to them; there's no "Magic Western Civilization Fairy" keeping them here. China could replace us,
All of the top microprocessor firms are US-based: Intel, AMD, the former ATI, nVidia. All of the top router companies are US-based: Cisco, Juniper (Alcatel-Lucent is also western, but based in France). All of the major OS efforts are based in the west: BSD, Linux, Windows, Unix, OSX-- all came out of the west, and the biggest of those on a consumer level (Windows, OSX) are both US based. All of the major web browsers, and the major plugins (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Flash, Silverlight, Java, Quicktime) are US based (only Opera is from outside the US, and that too is western).
I could go on and on. You say theres nothing keeping them here, but here they were founded and here they stay. There are a few in the east, but by and large they are in South Korea or Japan, which are quite western.
They are growing, and perhaps they will continue to do so until they too are major world innovators, but pretending that they are NOW is just not true.
If you do something the USG doesn't like, they can actually arrest you and throw you in jail on trumped-up charges.
Example please. And please compare with China, where they dont bother with the charges, they just imprison you (as that is perfectly legal).
The Chinese government can't do that (unless you travel there).
They can use the information to go after their own citizens, to steal company secrets, to read your email (remember, theyre a trusted CA), etc.
I don't trust any telecomminucations company to be honest- but I see no reason why to distrust China Telecom more.
Because with Chinese ISPs, its not a "if the proper paperwork is filed and you are suspicious, you will be monitored" situation; its a "if you are connected, everything you do is sent to the CCP servers".
I was just over there briefly, the degree of monitoring there is creepy. It results in a wonderful tourist destination, actually, because you will never find traffic blocked by a protest-- protests are quickly rounded up and ushered away. Trying to shout anti-government slogans, or distribute literature? Quickly silenced.
I think it would be absolutely foolish to trust them, especially given how much spying China does, and the likelyhood that they have forged SSL certs. The ONLY way I would consider using them is if I had my router permenantly VPN'd to a proper US ISP endpoint.
You may or may not be on the mark with the other examples (free speech zones make sense intellectually, but they still reek and I hate the thought of them), but this:
The mess over WikiLeaks.
Is ridiculous. Theres no "new direction" with wikileaks; at any time in history, if a citizen was caught doing the stuff that was done with wikileaks he would have been arrested for treason / espionage, and either hung or shot depending on the era.
The state has ALWAYS recognized the need for SOME secrets, and while you can debate whether or not we have too many now, releasing a whole boatload of diplomatic cables would ALWAYS have pissed the hell out of the US government. Diplomacy often requires some degree of secrecy unfortunately, and undermining diplomatic efforts isnt going to result in an indifferent US gov't.
China is a whole different ballgame, and youre naieve if you think otherwise. Try this test-- you and a buddy each get a cellphone, you in the US, him in China. You place a call to him, and start discussing the need for revolution in each country to fix its evils.
Then see who gets picked up and sent to a labor camp first. Bonus points if your friend is a chinese citizen.
I get that the US has problems, and (though Im still skeptical and wary of all the wild claims made about the state of interception here) I dont doubt that the FBI and NSA have some rather scary capabilities. But in the US they STILL have about a zillion hoops to jump through to monitor someone, theyre STILL subject to some degree of oversight, and they STILL respect the ability of a citizen to decry their own government (I dare you to find a citizen who was honest-to-goodness incarcerated for protesting the government here).
None of that applies in China, they can pick you up for no reason and put you in a labor camp for two years (minus a day) with no trial and no judicial oversight, release you for a day, and then pick you up again. They can, have, and do incarcerate people for simply demanding change. If an Occupy Shanghai movement started up, it would be about 5 hours before there was military rounding all the folks up and shipping them to Inner Mongolia for some ReEducation by Labor.
So sure, complain about the faults in our system, its what makes us stronger. But comparing us to China? "Youre out of your element, Donny".
They cant STIFLE free speech in the US; youre thinking in the wrong direction. However, China IS known to monitor every phone call, every website visit, etc that occurs in China, and youd be a fool to purchase a line from China Telecom and expect anything less than a malicious backstabbing MITM on every connection you make.
The problem is that it flat out doesnt work in reality. Why dont we give Iran and Israel both all our top military and nuclear tech? Im sure that middle east problem will resolve itself.
Or why dont we make all diplomatic talks with China or N Korea public? Why didnt we make public all of the intel ops surrounding the Bin Laden strike? Why not have all our advisors tell the world what they think regarding Greece's situation, Im sure THAT wont hurt markets. Why not have the nuclear launch codes be public, since they technically belong to the public?
It sounds great, until reality intrudes, and you realize that for all the problems with TOO much secrecy, none whatsoever isnt much of an improvement.
Thatll show them for using diplomacy instead of just bombing the shit out of people!! Diplomatic wires want to be free! Incarcerate Tsvingerai! Free Zimbabwe!
OOh, an AOL.com article. You showed HIM.
Also, Bettridge's law of headlines states that the answer to AOL's headline question is "No".
And saying "damage will be irreversable in x years" for the last nX years creates a serious problem for credibility.
The world would be a lot better if people could lay the facts bare without hyperbole and exaggeration; but of course that neither makes headlines nor gets attention.
Pretty sure China has a bigger population than the US.
Yes, have you seen the latest processors, stealth fighters, and trains produced by China? Oh wait, its the west that does all that stuff well.
China is making big strides, but acting like the west isnt leading in most technology areas is just ridiculous. High-tech is what we do BEST.
Cinema is dead... it just hasn't realised it yet...
Apparently they like losing money then. Someone should tell all those people Ive seen at the movies that theyre not supposed to be there.
Are you arguing that Movie theatres all are losing money, and just havent realized it?