Forum hacked

Posted by Owen Densmore on Nov 18, 2013; 5:12pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Forum-hacked-tp7584291.html

A forum I belong to has been hacked, including personal info as well as passwords.

How do they use this information?

I presume they try the hash function on all combinations of possible passwords.  (Naturally optimized for faster convergence).  They see a match, i.e. a letter combination resulting in the given hash of the password.

If they crack one password, does that make cracking the rest any easier?

And does "salt" simply increase the difficulty, and indeed can it be deduced, as above, by cracking a single password?

.. or is it all quite different from this!

   -- Owen

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com