From: Remo Pini <rp@rpini.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 05:07:53 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Word lists for passphrases
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19960712133856.008dfb10@193.246.3.200>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 03:51 PM 7/6/96 -0400, you wrote:
> > AwakenToMe@aol.com writes:
> > > I have a util that will create a word list starting from
> > > aaaaaaaaaaa on up to anythingggggggg basically you could do every
> > > combination. Let me know if ya want it.
> > 
> > That would really be of great use for doing wordlist crack runs. It
> > must have taken you a long time to write -- generous of you to offer
> > it.

I don't think any decent programmer has never tried such an aproach to crack
for example PKZIP archives (the one on CD-ROMs, where you have to pay to get
the passwords). I certainly did back in 1991. I don't want to put down the
usefullness of such a program, but since probably more than 50% of all
passwords are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, such a utility has not too
much value. (have you ever tried all combinations from "aaaaaa" to "zzzzzz"
(there are around 2'176'782'336 <36^6> if you concider all umlauts like the
German auml;, uuml;, ouml;, ...). On the other hand, there won't be much
more than 10'000 6-letter words in any dictionary.

So it seems, a wordlist generator and a wordlist using cracker works a lot
better (and is almost as trivial to do - if you keep aside nice features)

----------< fate favors the prepared mind >----------
Remo Pini                      Fon 1: +41 1 350 28 82
mailto:rp@rpini.com            Fon 2: +41 1 465 31 90
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