Canada has had quite the history of reliable satellites, including our very first Anik A1. It had a 7 year design life, and was retired 9.8 years after its launch (Nov 1972 to Jul 1982)
So you can imagine what success we might have at the local Canadian Tire and with $80000 in CT money
If it was a decent system the passwords would all be encrypted, and it would not allow insecure passwords.
Throw in caps, a number and a bit of punctuation and you won't be getting anywhere fast. 95^8 = 6634204312890625 possible passwords.
However, having users use all possible chars might not be practical.
Let's say we limit ourselves to [A-Z][a-z][0-9], and a length of at least 6 chars: 62^6 = 56800235584
On your average 1GHz x86 based system you can expect about 60K attempts a second. About 10957 days, 30 years.
It all boils down to humans though. They forget passwords, simple as that. You need something secure, but which won't swap your tech support centre with calls. Though imagine all the work they'll need to do now, contacting all the users and getting them to choose (or assigning) new passwords.
Perhaps you could add something to the agreement to this effect. Pick a simple password, don't blame us if your account is hijacked.
Slashdot Mirror
Given her name, she oughta be running Plan 9.
Seen this? http://www.dbeat.com/28/
It's still be a (near) revolution around the sun, except it'd be 312 "days" to the year, though still 52 weeks.
24 hours * 7 days * 52 weeks = 8736 hours
28 hours * 6 days * 52 weeks = 8736 hours
All times approximate.
But then it wouldn't make it into Debian..
15 inch screen on his chest, and perhaps an antenna on his head for wireless multiplayer gaming? He'll be a dead ringer for a Teletubby!
Don't forget the teenagers working at the aforementioned restaurants.
Their faces will get you places.
So you can imagine what success we might have at the local Canadian Tire and with $80000 in CT money
Actually, closer to 180M, no doubt for 3" CDs :)
Now there's a cool idea.
If it was a decent system the passwords would all be encrypted, and it would not allow insecure passwords.
Throw in caps, a number and a bit of punctuation and you won't be getting anywhere fast. 95^8 = 6634204312890625 possible passwords.
However, having users use all possible chars might not be practical.
Let's say we limit ourselves to [A-Z][a-z][0-9], and a length of at least 6 chars: 62^6 = 56800235584
On your average 1GHz x86 based system you can expect about 60K attempts a second. About 10957 days, 30 years.
It all boils down to humans though. They forget passwords, simple as that. You need something secure, but which won't swap your tech support centre with calls. Though imagine all the work they'll need to do now, contacting all the users and getting them to choose (or assigning) new passwords.
Perhaps you could add something to the agreement to this effect. Pick a simple password, don't blame us if your account is hijacked.
But this is all old news, isn't it?