On Tuesday 28 December 2004 19:25, Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede(a)hhs.nl> wrote:
> The program could try over 600 combinations a second on a 2-3yo
Athlon
> giving almost 5 digits tested per day if you only use lower-case and
> digits. This means that a pass-phrase of 6 characters comprising
> lower-case and digits could be reliably cracked in just over a month. 7
> characters could be done in 3 years with an old Athlon or maybe some
> reasonable amount of time in a dual-Opteron. 8 or more characters would
> require a large network of machines.
>
> Let me know if you want a copy of my code, but be warned, it's really
> ugly. Also it might be possible to optimise things and maybe double the
> speed if you can figure out GPG memory management (I can't).
1) Thanks, but I finally remembered my password
2) This is worry some, so a passphrase really should be 8 chars minimal?
Given that anyone can crack 6 characters, 7 characters could be cracked easily
by hardware that will be cheap in a few years, and 8 can be easily cracked
with a network of machines I think that you need at least 10 characters for
the pass-phrase to be worth much.
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