Comments on: A new version arrived – v1.1.0 is here

By: Rene

Rene — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 07:19:45 +0000

@Amiel: Thanks for the input. The idea of the significance is, that there are still legacy systems that only care about the first 8 characters. So if the beginning of the password is too simple, it does not help to make it stronger later because the target system does not care.

I will take a lock at your code soon and see if I can incorporate it.

Thank again.

By: Amiel Martin

Amiel Martin — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 23:10:09 +0000

Rene, thank you for yetanotherpasswordmeter. This is very helpful.

I’m not sure if I understand the “significance” feature. I guess I feel that aA-.85fG!11111111 and 11111111aA-.85fG! are equally as strong.

Anyway, I appreciate that you’ve included the option to turn the feature off with the “splitPassword” argument. However, the way that it is written, it is impossible to turn off.

The following change will fix the issue:

- if (!splitPassword)
- {
- splitPassword = true;
- }
-
+ if (typeof splitPassword === “undefined”)
+ {
+ splitPassword = true;
+ }

By: Rene

Rene — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:32:49 +0000

@mischachiaro: I fully agree that you need longer password for strong encryption. I designed my web site to give normal user a help for protecting himself a little better. You are an expert already.

By: mischachiaro

mischachiaro — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:20:55 +0000

I don’t know how to code. I encrypt all my drives with TrueCrypt. That’s why I was trying long passwords. Those people I know, who use full computer encryption (with TrueCrypt or otherwise, some Linux distros have it as a native option), use 20+ characters passwords as well. It’s standard behaviour for heavy encryption, since the password in that case is the weakest link.

Web services have exploitable vulnerabilities beyond the user’s reach. People normally aren’t afraid of having the data from their computers compromised, so they don’t use encryption. That’s why passwords of more than 8 to 12 characters offer little to no benefit in those cases, the system itself is less secure than the security a long password could offer.

By: Rene

Rene — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:57:31 +0000

@mischachiaro: Well, I tried to make it as real as possible. Long passwords are unusal and a normal human will neither use or manage them.

Why are these long passwords important and why does it make it difference how much redundancy it has? The first part is already good enough to be hard to break.

If you are fit in JavaScript, you can take the code (it’s free) and improve it. I would really value your contribution. An option to determine the desired optimal length for instance would be a good feature.

Thanks.

By: mischachiaro

mischachiaro — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:49:57 +0000

Another peculiarity. The password ” QmJ/6LTxt:Yrg’-1111111111 ” has the same scores as ” QmJ/6LTxt:Yrg’-1WK.IJuoDb “. The only thing that changes in the stats is redundancy, which doesn’t affect the scores.

I think your password meter is optimized for 8 character strings. I’d like to see it manage long passwords better. For 8 character passwords it’s fine.

By: Rene

Rene — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:30:14 +0000

Good catch. Basically the idea behind the new significance feature was a distinction between passwords with better data in the beginning of the password than later in it, aka the first 8 characters matter most. The reason is that some older systems only value the first x characters and ignore the rest.

If you try only the first 8 characters of your examples, you will get 59% for “-3XDR45,” and 100% for “NI3CE>le”. These numbers influence the password quality way higher than the rest of the characters.

What do you think? Does this answer your question?

By: mischachiaro

mischachiaro — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:01:57 +0000

I think the password meter isn’t working, or otherwise doesn’t give a trustworthy result.

For the password NI3CE>leroy>Salam it gives a score of 100%, “Very Strong”.

For the password -3XDR45, fse/n.ur) N`OO*;:+Mat9v it gives a score of 77%, “Strong”.

How does that proceed?

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Sun, 16 May 2010 23:38:33 +0000

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