August 21, 2012

There were 3 posts published on August 21, 2012 (this is page 1 of 1).

Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger | Ars Technica

Dan Goodin of Ars Technica wrote an eye-opening piece on the astonishing state of password cracking. Passwords once thought a few years ago to be safe enough to outlast a century of cracking attempts can now be broken in a matter of days (or even hours) – with a $1000 computer, no less.

The ancient art of password cracking has advanced further in the past five years than it did in the previous several decades combined. At the same time, the dangerous practice of password reuse has surged. The result: security provided by the average password in 2012 has never been weaker.

A PC running a single AMD Radeon HD7970 GPU, for instance, can try on average an astounding 8.2 billion password combinations each second, depending on the algorithm used to scramble them. Only a decade ago, such speeds were possible only when using pricey supercomputers.

via Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger | Ars Technica.

Pussy Riot case shows Russia’s dark path

Last week, Russian authorities handed down a harsh sentance to the three members of the female punk band Pussy Riot, after the band staged an anti-Putin “punk prayer” in a Russian Orthodox Church. It shows the increasingly autocratic ways of Russian prime minister Vladmir Putin, who is apparently leading the country away from its experiments as an open society (while lining his own pockets at the same time).

Below is a statement from one of the band members which was posted to one of the band’s support groups on Facebook. She is absolutely correct when she writes that the country’s heavy-handed response to their stunt shows the Russian leadership’s fear of opposition.

I hope their case will wake other Russians to Putin’s looting of their country and their rights.
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Google Image search is creepy powerful

Google Image Search can read T-shirts


When I want to see if a particular photo on the web is of a real person or just a stock photograph (also of a real person but a model, of course), I like to plug that photo into Google Image Search (GIS). Google can now search the web for similar images and often if several duplicates of an image show up there’s a good chance that image is a stock photo.

In an effort to see if he is who he says he is, today I searched on an image of a man wearing a T-shirt. Google did not find any matching images to the one I provided, which was somewhat expected. What was not expected was that the Goog was able to identify the man’s T-shirt and provide links to stores selling that same T-shirt! Google’s search actually read the wording on this shirt and matched it up with others!

This capability is quite astonishing, and also quite worrisome. Google’s motto is “don’t be evil.” If the company chose, it could become the best friend of any repressive government.