Hello, my name is John Lee.
I am doing a science project for my school. I chose to do the "Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?."
I have solved all the passwords 0-5. However I cannot solve password #6. I've tried leaving the program on for a few days, but it was still not fixed. I've tried editing the code by making it solve up to 10 digit numbers, and it's running right now.
Is something wrong or ...?
Please help.
Thank you!
-btcist-
Question for "Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?"
Moderators: AmyCowen, kgudger, bfinio, MadelineB, Moderators
-
HowardE
- Posts: 496
- Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:35 pm
- Occupation: Science Buddies content developer
- Project Question: N/A
- Project Due Date: N/A
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Question for "Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?"
Hi John-
I hope you're having fun playing with the program and learning how it works. The different methods represented are designed to guess how many people pick common passwords - but obviously it's not going to guess every password. The method that uses the 62 position 'wheels' is a general brute force solution that will eventually guess just about any password - and as you've seen from the math, long passwords will take a *very* long time.
Password 0 is a place for you to put in some of your own to test any new methods you've written. It starts as "314" which is easy to guess. You can just put in new ones to try our your own methods that might do better or simply guess faster. Passwords 1 through 5 are all passwords that the methods provided will guess. Password 6 is a little different in that none of the methods as you downloaded will guess it. Why might that be?
The brute force guessing method won't get it because it's longer than 8 characters. You could just have that method handle more characters but then you'll be waiting days or weeks for it to guess. That will find it eventually. If you think about your research and how people make up passwords, you can come up with some other method. For example, maybe a method that tries each of the words in the dictionary as pig latin https://www.google.com/search?q=pig+latin or ubbi dubbi https://www.google.com/search?q=ubbi+dubbi? Maybe it uses dictionary words and capitalizes some of them? Think about how you would try to make a password hard to guess and try writing a method to guess it.
So nothing is wrong, but adding more digits to the number-password guesser isn't going to get password 6. The purpose of the project idea is to encourage you to study the topic a bit and then try some guessing methods of your own. Password 6 was made up using techniques that people really do use in the real world.
One hint: It is based on words in the provided dictionary and brute force guessing isn't necessary.
Howard
I hope you're having fun playing with the program and learning how it works. The different methods represented are designed to guess how many people pick common passwords - but obviously it's not going to guess every password. The method that uses the 62 position 'wheels' is a general brute force solution that will eventually guess just about any password - and as you've seen from the math, long passwords will take a *very* long time.
Password 0 is a place for you to put in some of your own to test any new methods you've written. It starts as "314" which is easy to guess. You can just put in new ones to try our your own methods that might do better or simply guess faster. Passwords 1 through 5 are all passwords that the methods provided will guess. Password 6 is a little different in that none of the methods as you downloaded will guess it. Why might that be?
The brute force guessing method won't get it because it's longer than 8 characters. You could just have that method handle more characters but then you'll be waiting days or weeks for it to guess. That will find it eventually. If you think about your research and how people make up passwords, you can come up with some other method. For example, maybe a method that tries each of the words in the dictionary as pig latin https://www.google.com/search?q=pig+latin or ubbi dubbi https://www.google.com/search?q=ubbi+dubbi? Maybe it uses dictionary words and capitalizes some of them? Think about how you would try to make a password hard to guess and try writing a method to guess it.
So nothing is wrong, but adding more digits to the number-password guesser isn't going to get password 6. The purpose of the project idea is to encourage you to study the topic a bit and then try some guessing methods of your own. Password 6 was made up using techniques that people really do use in the real world.
One hint: It is based on words in the provided dictionary and brute force guessing isn't necessary.
Howard
Re: Question for "Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?"
"One hint: It is based on words in the provided dictionary and brute force guessing isn't necessary."
Do you mean the password is made up of words from the English dictionary?
Do you mean the password is made up of words from the English dictionary?
-
HowardE
- Posts: 496
- Joined: Thu Nov 20, 2014 1:35 pm
- Occupation: Science Buddies content developer
- Project Question: N/A
- Project Due Date: N/A
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Question for "Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?"
I can't really state it any more clearly than that. The sample code is provided along with a list of 400-some words. A guessing method successful in finding password 6 will be able to do that with the list of provided words.
Howard
Howard
Re: Question for "Password Security: How Easily Can Your Password Be Hacked?"
Hello Howard,
You've been answering so many questions for the Password security project. My situation for this project is urgent! Can you please check out my question subject titled "URGENT!!! Python Password Cracker: No output" by xSavagEx. Thank you in advance.
A 6th grader who needs help.
You've been answering so many questions for the Password security project. My situation for this project is urgent! Can you please check out my question subject titled "URGENT!!! Python Password Cracker: No output" by xSavagEx. Thank you in advance.
A 6th grader who needs help.