[CentOS] Another Fedora decision

Wed Feb 4 19:16:15 UTC 2015
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On 02/04/2015 02:08 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
>
> 3.) Attacker uses a large graphics card's GPU power, harnessed with 
> CUDA or similar, to run millions of bruteforce attempts per second on 
> the exfiltrated /etc/shadow, on their computer (not yours).
> 4.) After a few hours, attacker has your password (or at least a 
> password that hashes to the same value as your password), after 
> connecting to your system only once.
Oh, and the program to do this can be found very easily.  It's called 
'John the Ripper' and has GPU support available:
http://openwall.info/wiki/john/GPU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_the_ripper

Again, the real bruteforce danger is when your /etc/shadow is 
exfiltrated by a security vulnerability of the type that allows 
arbitrary remote code execution or arbitrary file access.  Once the 
attacker has your /etc/shadow, there is absolutely nothing you can do to 
keep said attacker from cracking your passwords at full speed.  Well, 
nothing except the password strength itself.