Xkcd: Encryptic

by ohazi • 13 years ago

120 62 13 years ago

deletes• 13 years ago

Image tooltip text made me laugh:

>It was bound to happen eventually. This data theft will enable almost limitless [xkcd.com/792]-style password reuse attacks in the coming weeks. There's only one group that comes out of this looking smart: Everyone who pirated Photoshop.<<

[xkcd.com/792]: http://xkcd.com/792/

RyanZAG2• 13 years ago

He missed a group of people: any designer who did not entrust their entire professional workflow to a single, for-profit company whose best interests are in moving your workflow in ways that benefit the company over the user. Being dependent on something like Photoshop for your only income is a terrible position to be in, yet it is how I'd describe most designers today.

sz4kerto2• 13 years ago

That situation cannot be (or should not be) avoided if a product is significantly better that any other competitor on the market. You can choose between

- depending on the for-profit company

- having disadvantage on the marketplace because of inferior tools

I think the former is often preferable.

hengheng• 13 years ago

Not being able to use CMYK is a terrible perspective if you ever get a chance of printing something.

j2kun• 13 years ago

Of course he missed that it's not funny.

p4bl02• 13 years ago

He forgot users of The Gimp ;-).

sz4kerto2• 13 years ago

I don't think they look smart at all ;) /s

sudhirj• 13 years ago

Anyone care to explain the DES misuse to laypeople? And why do some passwords have a salt(?) and some don't?

padwan• 13 years ago

That's not salt.

"Since DES only encrypts in blocks of 64 bits (8 bytes) then encrypting and keeping the length of blocks means that you actually get a very good idea of the length of the password - that is, anything with only one block is a password length between 1 and 8 characters, with two blocks between 9 and 16 characters etc. In addition a password of "1234567812345678" would encrypt into two identical blocks."

http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1286

taejo• 13 years ago

The passwords don't have a salt: that extra block that some of them have is the second block of the password (each block of 8 bytes is encrypted separately).

bazzargh• 13 years ago

As I understand it, Adobe used ECB mode, which means the blocks are encrypted independently. You can look at the encrypted blocks and see that two different passwords share character sequences. This is I assume what Randall is referring to with the 'crossword' bit - as well as having clues in the hints, solving one password may give you part of another. The suffix may also contain only one or two characters (plus padding) which makes it more plausible to mount a brute force attack.

ECB mode is just terrible. As well as these suffix problems, I've seen another example where a company used it to encrypt key-value pair cookies. Of course the keys are always the same...so prefixes were guessable too. And wikipedia has a fantastic example of why its stupid for images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECB_mode#Electronic_codebook_.2...

ohwp• 13 years ago

"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 {
    loginError();
  }

nodata2• 13 years ago

I'd hope the password is marked along with the hashing type, like in /etc/shadow

JulianMorrison• 13 years ago

ECB mode encryption is like the kind of cereal box cyphers you probably played with as a kid. For any given key, a fixed block of data goes in, a fixed block of data comes out. It won't usually be the whole of the password, but maybe "password" comes out as "94a012e6de4f1f0e" always. And so if you can guess that, then you're halfway to guessing "password123" and "passwordQWERTY" and so on.

In general, using any mode of encryption (rather than hashing) on passwords is dumb. But this is dumber than usual.

moomin• 13 years ago

explainxkcd hasn't worked out the passwords yet.

raws4• 13 years ago

Is 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?

bladedtoys• 13 years ago

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!

raws4• 13 years ago

It is not one of the common ones but I wonder if someone used it and just put it in as a clue which would mean that it's completely compromised...

tompaton• 13 years ago

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.

sect• 13 years ago

A rainbow table would probably be more accurate than a password set that comes up on google.

gberger• 13 years ago

Where can I download the breached file? I want to see if I'm in there...

raws4• 13 years ago

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

nodata2• 13 years ago

"bill@microsoft.com was found. You need to change your passwords now."

kfk• 13 years ago

Thanks, apparently I am on there. I don't remember how, I never used any of the Adobe crap. Well, changed the password anyway.

tambourine_man• 13 years ago

I'm a bit worried of submitting my email to this form. Shouldn't I be?

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

What do the boxes on the right represent?

St.peter

St.peter1

password

password1

password57

seem to be the first few if I understand correctly.

jawr2• 13 years ago

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.

ZeroGravitas2• 13 years ago

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.

Kiro• 13 years ago

How did you come up with that?

abraxasz• 13 years ago

The favorite of the 12 apostles would be Saint John, not Saint Peter[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciple_whom_Jesus_loved

jawr2• 13 years ago

That's too many characters, plus "Favourite of 12 Apostles" doesn't mean Jesus', it could be the users. I'm not convinced that it's St. though as when they say name1 that would suggest St. was part of it :p

neya2• 13 years ago

As 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.

hnha4• 13 years ago

instead of Gimp, have you tried darktable, krita, mypaint or rawtherapee? It depends what you need.

arb992• 13 years ago

Good points, but:

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.

Doesn't stop someone just removing the + tag on the email address.

A better way is to set up a catch all on a domain... but then you're likely to get a lot more spam... (to things like mail@, contact@ and a whole bunch of firstnamelastname@ guesses)

Sami_Lehtinen2• 13 years ago

For most it's just easier to use trashmail.net or mailinator.

Flenser• 13 years ago

Doesn't stop someone just removing the + tag on the email address.

It won't stop spam but the biggest risk with these leaks is from automated testing of a password found from a leak on one service you use with the same email address on another. As long as you use a separate + address for both you'll be safe as they are unlikely to automate testing of different + addresses since most users don't do that.

A better way is to set up a catch all on a domain... but then you're likely to get a lot more spam

I forward my catch all domain emails to gmail. I hardly get any spam now except to leaked addresses which I've filtered to add bright red labels so I can ignore them.

6thSigma• 13 years ago

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.

Hmm. I was one of the hacked users, but googling my email doesn't come up with anything.

neya2• 13 years ago

It is possible that your file wasn't indexed? The whole dump is 3 point something Gigabytes I think, and in the link only a portion was pasted for obvious size limitations. The indexed file was from a (spammy) copy paste service. so chances are good that the part of file which contained your ID wasn't indexed by google or was deleted. I also sent a complaint to Google and the copy-paste service to take down the file immediately for obvious privacy reasons..

acqq• 13 years ago

The kind of data that probably inspired the comics:

http://pastebin.com/9AShpF4B

Note the apparent password hints "Our business unit plus 1" or "usual one." Really crosswordy.

NateDad• 13 years ago

Yay 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.

stonemetal• 13 years ago

I believe they are trying to make sure the system is secure first. No point in having everyone reset their password if the bad guys still have access to the password db.

kaivi• 13 years ago

Someone should assemble the leaked hashes and hints into a real, huge browser-based multiplayer crossword. Imagine how awesome would that be.

phreeza• 13 years ago

Given the history of life immitates xkcd, that is probably just a matter of time.

rmc2• 13 years ago

What's the status with figuring out the encryption key and breaking all those passwords? Surely there are known passwords. Is there any distributed brute force attempt that I can help with?

shawabawa32• 13 years ago

1. That's probably illegal so if there was one it wouldn't be publicly advertised

2. If adobe weren't completely stupid (a big if admittedly) it will be infeasible to brute force (>100 bits of entropy)

rmc2• 13 years ago

it will be infeasible to brute force (>100 bits of entropy)

Really? Even a massively distributed attempt?

coldcode• 13 years ago

I wonder who the chief security officer of Adobe is (should be was) and why they never had sufficient security audits to look at how they did security. Why is it virtually every time there is a leak people did the encryption wrong?

Xkcd: Encryptic

Related Stories