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GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Bergholt Stuttley Johnson16-Mar-15 5:27
professionalBergholt Stuttley Johnson16-Mar-15 5:27 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Nagy Vilmos16-Mar-15 4:48
professionalNagy Vilmos16-Mar-15 4:48 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Eddy Vluggen16-Mar-15 4:50
professionalEddy Vluggen16-Mar-15 4:50 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
den2k8816-Mar-15 4:56
professionalden2k8816-Mar-15 4:56 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
amagitech16-Mar-15 5:04
amagitech16-Mar-15 5:04 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
OriginalGriff16-Mar-15 5:12
mveOriginalGriff16-Mar-15 5:12 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
den2k8816-Mar-15 5:18
professionalden2k8816-Mar-15 5:18 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Keith Barrow16-Mar-15 5:10
professionalKeith Barrow16-Mar-15 5:10 
xiecsuk wrote:
Am I missing something here?

Quite a lot, because it's pretty complicated. Firstly, you are assuming they've hashed the password, some (even large companies) don't they use a symmetric algorithm. If a company can send your password to you, say via e-mail, they are using a symmetric algorithm (at best).This is insecure.

The idea is the hashing is one way, so the hash cannot be reversed, so password123 ---> 7FDEADBEEF or whatever. It the password table is stolen there are two immediate vulnerabilities. First off, if the system allows a bad password such as "password" this is going to be the most common value stored in the password field across the table, and you can work backwards through the most probable ones. The second vulnerability is something called a rainbow table, this reduces the amount of time it takes to reverse engineer a password that is going to lead to a particular hash. Worse, these tables are readily available, so you don't need the compuation time to get started.

You can salt the password (adding a random bit of text which you store) in various ways, e.g. add then hash or has the password, salt then hash the result. This mitigates against the vunerabilities described above, but given enough time brute force strategies will always win - even if enough time means from now until after the end of the universe.
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!

GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Rage16-Mar-15 5:35
professionalRage16-Mar-15 5:35 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Mark_Wallace16-Mar-15 5:13
Mark_Wallace16-Mar-15 5:13 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Rage16-Mar-15 5:31
professionalRage16-Mar-15 5:31 
JokeRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Pablo Aliskevicius16-Mar-15 6:00
Pablo Aliskevicius16-Mar-15 6:00 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Mark_Wallace16-Mar-15 10:02
Mark_Wallace16-Mar-15 10:02 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
  Forogar  16-Mar-15 6:52
professional  Forogar  16-Mar-15 6:52 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
newton.saber16-Mar-15 5:29
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GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Rage16-Mar-15 5:33
professionalRage16-Mar-15 5:33 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Eddy Vluggen16-Mar-15 5:53
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GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
OriginalGriff16-Mar-15 5:54
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GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Deflinek16-Mar-15 5:55
Deflinek16-Mar-15 5:55 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
Keith Barrow16-Mar-15 6:09
professionalKeith Barrow16-Mar-15 6:09 
GeneralRe: Am I right or am I right? Pin
PIEBALDconsult16-Mar-15 7:38
mvePIEBALDconsult16-Mar-15 7:38 
GeneralVS2012/13 Find and Replace Window Pin
Kevin Marois16-Mar-15 4:32
professionalKevin Marois16-Mar-15 4:32 
GeneralRe: VS2012/13 Find and Replace Window Pin
Maximilien16-Mar-15 4:50
Maximilien16-Mar-15 4:50 
GeneralRe: VS2012/13 Find and Replace Window Pin
Kevin Marois16-Mar-15 5:06
professionalKevin Marois16-Mar-15 5:06 
GeneralRe: VS2012/13 Find and Replace Window Pin
Eddy Vluggen16-Mar-15 9:23
professionalEddy Vluggen16-Mar-15 9:23 

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