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It’s probably not safe if they use that for everything. Someone could match emails and password suffixes, then they’d only have four letters to brute force. So all it takes is two leaks that your friend is on and they’re at real risk.
Generally, this would be avoided by whatever site storing their passwords as hashes instead of in plain text, but you can’t rely on that.
They should just use a password manager.
If they start using Keepass, we now know, their master password will be: kessSWydThIThBaPl!690720
I hope OP just constructed the core password as an example only.
I used to do this. Have a system for generating a unique password for each site. But then one site got hacked and I had to reset my password, and I couldn't use the old password. So I had to make a new system. You see the problem.
A solution to this is to keep adding elements to the chain to create a new password. Like your base password is FavouriteCharacter2025siteletters, and if you need to change it, go for FavouriteCharacter2025siteletters!!!
If you add the same element across accounts when you need to change a pw, it's still easy to remember, just a few more try when you forget it, it's still useful against database leaks, and it's not worse when it comes to targeted hack.
How many sites are we talking about? I have like 600 passwords in my password manager, it would be insane to try to remember each of the rules for when I changed the password last.
Well if you only change your password 3-4 times, you only have 4-5 options to try. You also kinda remember for most website if you changed your password a lot or not, so you naturally try the most plausible option first, at least in my experience.
If you regularly change your password, it can become a nightmare, i agree.
You can buy leaked passwords from the dark web if you know someone's email.
So if someone got say 5 passwords from this person and look at them they'd very quickly be able to figure out the pattern and would know all their passwords.
The method they use is safe from scripts etc. But not foolproof
I used to use a similar system until I switched to a password manager. Convenience is a big factor, it's nice to not have to think about logging in. Also coupled with that a secure password is a long password, so not having to type it in is a bonus.
The person says that, since the beginning of the password is unique, its "unhackable", and that the attacker would need like 3 samples of the password to figure out their system.
I've had my data leaked more than 3 times, it's not an unlikely scenario that someone could get a list of passwords used by someone.
Also once their system is compromised, they have to come up with a new system, then go and change every password. Which if it was me would be hundreds of places. With a password manager there's no reason not to have completely unique passwords for everything, so if there is a leak, oh well, just change that password.
There are two answers to your question.
Most password cracking operations target a database of user accounts in bulk. As long as the hacker is not targeting your friend specifically, they should be fine.
If your friend is the target, one or two successful hacks could make their other passwords vulnerable.
It’s safe until you’re targeted.
From what I understand, they (hackers) try known email/password combinations at different sites because a lot of people reuse their passwords. I also find it unlikely that anyone trying hack accounts will spend any amount of time looking at individual passwords if their list is 1000+ (and we know there are leaks in the milions).
I agree that they are reasonably save unless they are targeted.
The problem is that it’s a common suffix among all of their passwords. That kind of thing is easy to search for in a password leak database.
Know your enemy:
Your "system" is good against 1. but vulnerable against 2., and a bit vulnerable against 3. because of the system.
If you're using a password on one site you're trusting that site to keep that password safe, so that only you can access your account.
If you're using one password everywhere you're trusting the weakest site to keep your most important account safe, which is obviously a bad idea.
Your friend is trusting the weakest sites he uses (or used at any point in the past) to keep his password scheme safe. Not quite as obviously bad, but to me it doesn't seem to be a particularly good idea either.
This system is fine. While patterns are obviously easier to hack, having unique passwords for each site and being able to remember them puts your friend in the 90^th^ percentile of computer users.
For random password dumps going through thousands of accounts it's probably fine, but if you're targeted for some reason and they get just a couple passwords. With even just 2 passwords, that system may be obvious already to someone looking to gain access to your accounts specifically.
I reject the premise!
There is no safe or unsafe. It's more like "more safe for a given person".
Your friend's system is better than using the same password everywhere. It's more difficult to hack than the majority of passwords that aren't generated by password managers. If that's what your friend likes and works for them well, fine I guess.
It wouldn't work for me because:
There's literally only 4 characters difference between all their passwords, even if those would be completely random, that's very bad.
They don't seem to understand that it's not about how many samples you need to see to be sure what their Amazon password is. The problem is that if one of their passwords ever leaks, some bot can brute-force try thousands of variations on it and find any other password very quickly (they effectively only have to guess 4 characters, plus a bit to find that it's the first 4 to change).
How can anyone think this is more secure than having completely different and long passwords for every site?
They probably don't understand that your pw manager's password is safer because you don't enter it anywhere, only into your password manager (ideally with 2FA). This person is effectively spreading their master password around by putting it as the core of ALL their passwords, significantly increasing the risk that it leaks.
There’s literally only 4 characters difference between all their passwords, even if those would be completely random, that’s very bad.
So the 4 characters is just my way to explain their system, I don't actually know how many characters they use in their "unique" part of the password, but the idea is that the unique part of the password is derived from the website.
The relationship is the problem.
Calculating the levenshtein distance is the first thing that comes to mind, then creating a regular expression that covers any leaked passwords tied to the same account.
This is all easily scriptable and two leaked passwords might be all a script needs to discover the pattern. Once the pattern is known, all of their passwords become knowable.
Obviously random is better, but uniqueness of passwords is IMO even more important. They are effectively spreading around their master password
Better than a lot of other methods. What are you protecting, from who and how annoying would it be to recover if it went wrong. I don't use a password manager because I'd lose the file for sure and it would be just as inconvenient to recover as if someone hacked me. I also don't have any sensitive stuff. Work on the other hand I have a password manager.
The lowest hanging fruit is using a leaked/hacked/stolen list of accounts/emails and passwords and trying them on other sites. You should be safe from that.
If you have sensitive information someone would be willing to break the law and spend a few thousands of dollars to get you're not safe.
~~I hope you didn't make their actual basic phrase public.~~
In my opinion any password that's designed to be human-friendly isn't secure. Every crutch one uses to remember it, a machine can make much faster use of.
In this case I'd say the core idea: "SWydThIThBaPl!" is relatively safe, but 690720 is almost immediately recognizable as a date - to a machine! - and amng, leum etc. are even easier assuming the cracking program has knowledge of which site they're trying to gain access to.
So the only good part is the one that repeats for every password.
I think the top half of this xkcd illustrates some of it; but iirc the bottom half has been sort-of half debunked.
In any case, I use only very long and completely random passwords for online accounts.
Does this person think password managers are crutches? You cannot out-remember a machine.
PS: entropy is not the only measure for password safety.
Brute force comes way down the list.
Its an example. Not a real password
If you replace the "SWydThIThBaPl!690720" part with a random string like: dsh2box5hRs3wraA (just generated this), but kept the system the same, would your assessment of this system be different? (Assuming someone can actually remember that string of characters)
I get the idea as I used to do this too. Having secure & different passwords everywhere is just the basic way to go. As such I dont think though its a good idea to put a system in your passwords. Hacking attempts are automated and getting smarter every day. Its only a matter of time until someone unleashes an AI to look for patterns and you are toast.
I recommend to juse a decent password manager that generates them for you and as much MFA as possible.
Just use is now j'use
On one hand, it's probably not that unlikely that an attacker gets 3 samples if the email or username gets reused a lot, on the other hand I wonder how well automated password crackers deal with systems like this. 'one good pattern with a couple of extra characters per site' seems like a pretty common password system.
So no this is not safe. Once ypu have a system it is easier to crack because if someone has 2 or more of your passwords they can work out there is a system and it'd make it much easier to crack others if they're determined.
It is unlikely that someone random would specifically target a person and systematically try and crack their passwords. If that were to happen it'd most likely he someone they know - and this does happen sometimes. So while the passwords are definitely flawed it may not be something that anyone takes the time to exploit. But you can never say never.
The best way to manage passwords probably remains a secure password manager and randomly generated series of characters for each site. If its truly random then there are no shortcuts and every single password stands independently. The password manager gets round the issue of memorising them.
So, dedicated enough to embrace the importance of a solid password but not humble enough to think he's got a better system than what everybody else reccomend.
The system is clearly flawed ego wise.
It's an insafe password + salt.
Its secure enough for the average person. If your friend was a big deal, super rich or powerful and a massive target it would be easy enough to figure out.
I doubt it would be worthwhile trying to crack that particular code for the average joe.
No it's still not safe. The only way to truly be safe is randomized password strings and 2fa (and even then, you're beholden to the safety of the company)
KeePassXC can tell you if a password is secure ("entropy", "health check", they also use an online service to check for leaked/known passwords).
I doubt it can figure out whether a password system is secure. I'd be surprised if "leumSWydThIThBaPl!690720" didn't get a decent score, though.
If it is sufficiently long, and the pattern is in any way dynamic then yes.
If they're doing something like lemmy-core-420 then no.
A drummer friend used to do a few bars of a different rudiment. Like djddjdjjdjddjdjjdjddjdjjdjddjdjj and then account for PW rules
That system is vulnerable to social engineering attacks. If hackers found out all their favourite things that lead to the core part of the password, guessing the prefix wouldn't be that hard. Also, what would your friend do if one of these passwords got compromised and had to change it? Would he just add a 1 to the site-specific part of the password?
Isn't every system vulnerable to social engineering hacks?
Yeah, but there are degrees of vulnerability. Otherwise, things like password strength or MFA wouldn't matter.
If all your passwords are fully random, then that's one less weakness that can be exploited. People can't make educated guesses about your passwords just from analysing your social media profiles and history, e.g. if you post a lot about Star Wars, it's more likely your passwords could contain a Star Wars reference.
... true. You were clearly talking about how the "root" was constructed. If the root were random, a weakness would still be inherent in having the root exposed means all your accounts are potentially compromised, but social engineering wouldn't be as much of an issue.
I skipped over the root generation, as it's just a useless twist on an older process. "Useless" in that I don't think it adds any value to construct a root from favorite things. It's no easier than just memorizing a single 12-character random string and then adding per-site suffixes, which is how I first heard this described a decade ago.
I would say this system is safe until one password - through no fault of their own - gets leaked. Worse even, two of them. If a bored hacker sees them in a stolen list, they could go to town on all other accounts. So you should advise your acquaintance to change their system. Long passwords are great but if they repeat a lot of characters they are immediately less useful. If the repeating string is known it makes brute-forcing other accounts that much easier.
The best advice is to keep unique passwords for all accounts. And by unique I mean not following a system like that. Long, random, non-sensical crap is best (but also most annoying) - for now. Once quantum computers become a thing, all this probably won't matter any more.
Edit: And always with non-SMS, non-emailed 2FA. But if those are the only options available it's better than nothing.