What do the boxes on the right represent? St.peter St.peter St.peter1 password password1 password57 seem to be the first few if I understand correctly.
How did you come up with that?
Xkcd: Encryptic
21–30 of 64 posts
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#22As funny as this comic is, it wasn't so funny when my card was hacked and my personal details were released online. Now anyone who searches for my email (on Google) is displayed a (spammy) link to the dumped file containing my email, along with some jumbled letters, possibly my encrypted password.
One super-good thing I did when I signed up for adobe was:
I created a separate email address (purely by co-incidence) that I used exclusively for Adobe (and for some spammy services like some deal sites, which didn't require my card). As a result, I know for sure that my card was compromised because of the Adobe's breach and no one else.
Lessons and observations:
1) I'm glad I bought the CS6. With the cloud comes great risks too. Not to say that you should avoid cloud products, but when you have a version you can own forever, then you might as well go for it. Imagine if I was on CC and my card was hacked and I decided to stop paying Adobe the next month out of frustration. Do you know what will happen? My company will come to a stand-still because I will no longer have access to Photoshop and a huge portion of my company is basically a Media company.
2) Someone else said we're depending too much on Adobe, and I tend to agree. But there is really no superior equivalent for Adobe's Photoshop at the moment. Please don't cite GIMP - I've tried it and it needs a lot of work to even be on par with Photoshop atm. Another factor is the PSD file format which has painfully spread like a Virus and you can't erase it out of your workflow if you're a Media shop like us (Most printing services accept PSDs/TIFF). I sincerely wish why YC companies who generally want to change the world, don't want to create a Photoshop clone/competitor to kill this stupid Adobe that's ruining all of our lives with the stupid CC bundle.
3) The people who really won, like someone else said, were the ones who used pirated versions. I mean, I've paid a total of ~$1400 till now to Adobe and what have I received from Adobe? A 'fuck you' from their CEO in the form of their Creative cloud bundle and a hack that leaked my personal details online making me look like a jack ass to anyone who searches for me by my email. Oh also don't forget the uncounted number of "fuck you's" he's sent me while developing for Flash (on mobile) and Flex.
4) Always create a separate email (or an alias) while signing up for cloud services, so you can eliminate guess work during a crisis. So, instead of signing up with example@gmail.com for Adobe or someone else, use example+adobe@gmail.com (this will redirect to example@gmail.com) or rather create adobe.example@gmail.com or something (gmail is just an example). This way, you can always trace out the right service responsible for the leakage of your details whenever something goes wrong.
I was lucky enough that my bank blocked my card on observing a fraudulent transaction initiated from another country and thus issued me with a new card. I have no plans to upgrade from CS6 or to something else for the next few years. Hopefully GIMP will get better by then, or some YC company will create a better Photoshop and let us own it forever for a one-time fee.
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#23Is there a website out there that will tell you how many times your password has been used based on this database of the 153millions accounts?
To make it searchable on your password, someone would have to go through the Adobe set and use the hints to manually figure out the clear text form. Off hand, it's hard to see how posting that on the web could be done responsibly. But until someone does, you could just Google "most common passwords" and if yours is in the set, you win!
no, you have known plain text, so you just have to encrypt your password using the same algorithm and then search the database for matching ciphertext, there's no need to find the clear text for any of the passwords.
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#24Anyone care to explain the DES misuse to laypeople? And why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?
"why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?" I'm not sure if this is the case, but sometimes this has to do with 'backwards compatibility'. I've seen databases where some passwords where MD5, some SHA1, some Bcrypt and so on. The login page then will do something like: if(checkBcrypt(password)) { login(); } else if(checkSha1(password) || checkMd5(password)) { updateDbPassword(password); login(); } else { lo…
I'd hope the password is marked along with the hashing type, like in /etc/shadow
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#25Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#26Where can I download the breached file? I want to see if I'm in there...
no need to download it if you just want to check yourself: http://adobe.cynic.al/ props to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6661774
Thanks, apparently I am on there. I don't remember how, I never used any of the Adobe crap. Well, changed the password anyway.
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#27The kind of data that probably inspired the comics:
Note the apparent password hints "Our business unit plus 1" or "usual one." Really crosswordy.
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#28What do the boxes on the right represent? St.peter St.peter St.peter1 password password1 password57 seem to be the first few if I understand correctly.
The favorite of the 12 apostles would be Saint John, not Saint Peter[1]
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#29Yay for LastPass - my password at adobe is a long string of gobbedlygook that is unique to the site. I changed it just in case...
which makes me think...
Why the hell hasn't Adobe reset everyone's password yet? That would be the FIRST thing I did in that situation. At least prevent the world from being able to log into my own site with the leaked passwords.
Re: Xkcd: Encryptic
#30What do the boxes on the right represent? St.peter St.peter St.peter1 password password1 password57 seem to be the first few if I understand correctly.
I was thinking that St.peter would have to be peter (NAME1) but then that wouldn't be enough to be it's own block. I'm guessing the split boxes [ ][ ][ ] are characters and the long [\t] are for numbers.
I think the eight square boxes mean "exactly 8 characters", and the long rectangles mean "up to 8 characters".
You can tell them apart (sometimes) because "exactly 8 characters" will match if those 8 characters are re-used by someone else with a longer than 8 character password.
And the layout emphasizes the re-use, which is also shown by color coding.