Figure 1: [here]

Those Tables With Password Cracking Times That Scare You And Peddle Snake Oil — Are Mostly Wrong!

Meet The Mighty PBKDF2 (Protector of Wifi and Your Password)

Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE
7 min readJul 4, 2023

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Education and snake oil?

In cybersecurity, you get those who pedal snake oil, and others that just try to scare you. The gap is that the advice is not given in an educated way, and basically just scares people (or gets them to buy the latest security product).

These days, the chances of someone cracking your password from a hashed version is likely to be minimal. For one, the chances of getting access to the hashed version of a password is extremely low, and for two, the password is typically stored in a way that will make it extremely costly — such as requiring the cost of electricity to boil a lake (or loch, in Scotland) — to crack it.

But, still, we get them from those who aim to “educate” (aka “preach”) us on Cybersecurity. Telling us not to share our passwords or to not click on spear-phishing links are better approaches…

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Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE

Professor of Cryptography. Serial innovator. Believer in fairness, justice & freedom. Based in Edinburgh. Old World Breaker. New World Creator. Building trust.