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25 Mar 2022 - Podcast #785 - (17:50)
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You may have seen articles that claim a 7-character password containing numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols "could" be cracked in less than a minute. Longer passwords are better. Using upper- and lower-case letters along with numbers and symbols is better. But less than a minute?
The truth may depend on how we define cracked. According to Hive Systems, a password like GdJ&cH4 could be cracked in about 31 seconds using readily available technologies. That is, if we tell the application we're looking for a 7-character password containing numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and symbols, it should create this sequence in 31 seconds. That's not exactly a real-world example, though.
If by cracked, we mean that we would find the password in the program's output, the password has been cracked. But the resulting list would contain millions of possible sequences.
There are 26 uppercase letters, 26 lowercase letters, 10 digits, and around 20 symbols. Because some of the symbols can't be used in passwords, let's say there are 10. Adding the possible characters, we get 72. Each character in the password can be one of 72 options. There are 7 characters in the password, so that's 72 to the 7th power permutations (727).
Did I say millions? That's a bit of an understatement. The actual number of permutations is 10,030,613,004,288 — we can round that off to a little over 10 trillion. To put that in perspective one trillion seconds is about 31,688 years, so 10 trillion seconds would be about 316,880 years. And if you have a 20-character password, you'd have to work through 1.401e37 permutations. That's well beyond an octillion, but let's get back to our much smaller number: If some application could create the 10 trillion possibilities presented by the 7-character password in 31 seconds, you would know that the password is present in the huge list. But how useful is it?
In short: Not very.
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The problem with saying that you've cracked the password is that you still don't know which of the combinations you have is the one you want. To discover that, you'd need access to the computer where the credentials are used and the user name. Then you'd have to try each of the trillion-plus possible passwords. Because many systems lock users out after a certain number of failed attempts, this would be a long process. And if the user has set up multi-factor authentication — well, you see where I'm going with this.
That's why most crooks don't use brute force to crack passwords. Social engineering is much faster and easier.
Even so, a claim about quickly cracking passwords is a dramatic example of how technology changes things, and it does force people to slow down for a moment and at least think about security. Hive Systems regularly updates the chart. Two years ago, a 7-character password would have been cracked in about 7 minutes, but increased processing power has cut that to 31 seconds.
For your safety and the security of your data, the usual safeguards apply:
To ensure that you maintain control of your user names, passwords, and the accounts protected by those credentials, be suspicious of emails, instant messages, phone calls, and other communications. A message that claims to be from your bank, internet service provider, domain host, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, PayPal, UPS, the USPS, FedEx, DHL, or any other delivery organization, government agency, or business might be legitimate. But it also might be a fake.
You probably already know the drill here:
So do it the easy way: Refuse phone calls from unknown sources, ignore any email or instant message, and deal with the apparent sender directly. There are so many variations on so many cons that it's impossible to anticipate them all.
Instead, be suspicious, and stay safe out there on the internet.
My wife's computer was nearing the end of its useful life in early March. Slow and underpowered by today's standards, the 5-year-old computer suffered from a keyboard that sometimes didn't respond and other times responded several times to a single key press.
It affected mostly keys on the left side of the keyboard. There are some really important letters over there. E of course, along with S, T, R, and A. That's not to denigrate the right side of the keyboard. O, P, and L are important, too, and that's where the most used punctuation marks are.
It's possible to replace the keyboard on a notebook computer. Possible, but tedious. A year or so ago, I had to replace the motherboard in her work computer. Replacing the keyboard in her home computer wouldn't be that challenging, but I didn't want to do it because then she'd just have a 5-year-old, slow, underpowered computer with a new keyboard.
The other option would have been to use a USB keyboard, but Phyllis holds the computer on her lap when she's off work. A separate keyboard wouldn't do. It was time for a new computer.
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We ordered a new computer and a copy of Lap Link's PCmover. Whether you buy a boxed copy or not, you'll download the software to both computers. The boxed versions contain either a special Ethernet cable or a special USB cable. I bought the copy with an Ethernet cable.
That turned out to be a problem. The old computer has an Ethernet port, but the new one doesn't. LapLink says "Cables are NOT required since PCmover can always use a wireless network that is connected to your old and new PC. However, using a cable will result in faster transfer speeds for most users." I can attest to that, but first let's consider the process.
PCmover requires no technical knowledge beyond being able to download and install an application and maybe how to update Windows.
LapLink also cautions that both computers must be fully updated and that you can't migrate a newer system to a computer with an older version of Windows. The new computer had Windows 10 (21H1) and also offered Windows 11, but we stuck with Windows 10 for now. The old computer had Windows 10 (21H2), so I had to manually load the 21H2 version on the new computer before starting.
Start the program on each computer, enter the registration code on each, and the computers find each other. All the user has to do is correctly identify the old computer and the new computer and start the process. That's assuming you want to migrate all applications and data from the old computer to the new computer. If not, you can customize the process; but most people want the new computer to have the same programs and applications as the old computer.
For best results, you may want to have a cat nearby. I have a couple of notebook computer holders that elevate the computer a bit for better air circulation, so I put them on a bed, but the old computer on one and the new computer on the other, and inadvertently attracted Chloe Cat, who wanted to see what was going on.
Because I couldn't use the Ethernet cable, I logged both computers on to the Wi-Fi network. The process started and PCmover told me the network speed was OK and that the transfer would take about seven hours. That seemed excessive and within minutes, network quality was shown as unusable. The problem was obvious: Two computers sitting side by side and running on the same Wi-Fi network. The machines were interfering with each other. LapLink suggested moving the computers further apart. That didn't change anything. Then I tried running one computer on the 2.4GHz network and the other on the 5GHz network. That helped, but not much.
Well, the old computer does have an Ethernet connector. So why not plug the old computer into the router so that it would have a wired connection and use Wi-Fi for the new computer. That worked perfectly and PCmover said the process would be complete in about 33 minutes. I presumed that was overly optimistic and we were less than an hour away from a planned maintenance outage by American Electric Power, so I halted the transfer.
When power was restored a few hours later, I started the transfer again and PCmover again said the process would take about 33 minutes. In fact, it took about three times that long. At the end of the process, the new computer booted and the interface looked almost exactly like the old computer's interface. All of the essential programs and their data were in place.
Purists might insist on setting up a new computer manually, but in most cases and for most people PCmover will save a lot of time and turn what could be a complex process into an easy process.
On the day I was preparing this report, the 9th of March, the population of the planet had increased by about 14.7 million people since January first. There are about 382 thousand births per day and around 166 thousand deaths per day. Some of the information is estimated, of course, but this is just a bit of the information included on the World Population Review website.
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The United Nations estimates that the planet's population was about 7 billion people in October 2011. The US Census Bureau and World Bank, believe that the total population of the world reached 7 billion in 2012 around March or April.
I live on the edge of Columbus, which is the 15th largest city in the United States. Austin is a little larger and San Francisco is a bit smaller. The big three are New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Cleveland is 54th, Cincinnati is 65th, and surprisingly Pittsburgh is only 68th. Pittsburgh seems larger. Maybe it has something to do with the hills and rivers. The top 11 cities have populations ranging from one million to eight million and all of the largest 100 cities have populations in excess of 100,000.
If you're thinking SO WHAT!??? at this point, the World Population Review website is probably not for you. But if you're intrigued by that kind of information, you'll find a lot more to enjoy.
In 1940, Columbus had a population of 306,000, but the trend has been steadily upward since then. Cleveland had more than 800,000 residents in 1940, but population had started what became a steep decline in the 1960s and Cleveland's population is now about what is was in 1900. Information like this is available for continents, countries, world cities, and US states, counties, cities, and postal codes. But that's just the beginning.
The World Population Review website describes population size and density, diversity, population change over time, and demographics. You'll find population data by age, information about home ownership, family sizes, education by various age ranges, earning information as related to education, poverty rates, languages spoken, military veterans, labor force data, and information about non-citizens and the origin of naturalized citizens.
This kind of information is used by marketing professionals, but that doesn't mean you have to be a marketing professional to use it. All you need is an interest in a city, country, state, country, or continent. And if this kind of information piques your interest, you might also want to try the CIA's World Factbook website. No security clearance is required.
Bluetooth technology was still new in 2002, having been invented 1989 by Nils Rydbeck, the chief technical officer at Ericsson Mobile in Lund, Sweden. It wasn't yet being built in to every possible device, but it could be added. Here's what I wrote:
If you have a Palm organizer that accepts postage-stamp-size SD cards, you might consider installing a $130 Bluetooth-enabled card. (Bluetooth, you may recall from earlier programs, is a technology that allows devices to communicate with each other wirelessly. There are 2 versions -- one that works for devices located up to 10 meters apart and another that works with devices that are up to about 100 meters apart. For US readers who are challenged by metric measurements, the first is about the length of a yardstick* and the second is about the size of our US measurement standard, the football field.)
*Apparently I'm among those challenged by metric measurements. 10 meters may be the length of a TEXAS YARDSTICK, but 10 meters would be about the length nearly ELEVEN yardsticks. Thanks to Mike Price for catching the error.
Once you have the card and its accompanying software installed, your Palm device will be able to connect with Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones, printers, notebook computers, and other Palm handhelds.
Here's an example Palm suggests: In a taxi on the way to the airport or the train station, a passenger can quickly check the status of his departure online by using his Palm handheld with his Bluetooth-enabled phone. As he waits in the airline lounge or on the station platform, he can tap a phone number in his Palm Address Book, which will directly dial his GSM phone and connect him with his customer to confirm a meeting for the following day. After his arrival, he can use the business office at his hotel to wirelessly print to a Bluetooth-enabled printer an important document stored on his Palm handheld. During the customer meeting, when his colleague needs to get him a message without interrupting the conversation, the mobile professional can silently and privately chat with his colleague -- Palm handheld-to-Palm handheld.