Dailydave: Re: phpbb.com hacked...

[Robert Graham <robert_david_graham () yahoo com>]

Oh, yea, there are lots of problems with the dataset, that's just one potential problem. My analysis should be viewed 
as one datapoint in the field of password analysis rather than an authoritative assessment of all passwords.

The passwords come with user information. That information looks what I expect from legitimate users rather than what I 
see as spammers on PHPbb style forums. Thus, the numbers may be skewed by spammers, but I think it largely reflects 
normal users.


--- On Sat, 2/7/09, Robert Lemos <mail () robertlemos com> wrote:

> From: Robert Lemos <mail () robertlemos com>
> Subject: Re: [Dailydave] phpbb.com hacked...
> To: robert_david_graham () yahoo com
> Cc: "dailydave" <dailydave () lists immunitysec com>, "Dave Aitel" <dave.aitel () gmail com>
> Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009, 4:41 AM
> Did you take into account that about half the accounts
> appeared to be spammers, according to the post by the guy
> who hacked the site? (He found 400,000 accounts, but there
> are only 200,000 members.)
>
> So, in fact, the 28,000 passwords he decrypted may only be
> spam accounts, or a significant fraction of them are, which
> could be the reason your results are skewed toward simple
> passwords. Just an alternative explanation...
>
> -R
>
> On Feb 6, 2009, at 6:12 PM, Robert Graham wrote:
>
> > I ran the passwords through an analysis program to
> gather statistics on them. I posted a summary of the results
> here:
> >
> http://www.darkreading.com/blog/archives/2009/02/phpbb_password.html
> > 35% of passwords are 6-characters. Here is the top 20
> list:
> > Here is the top 20 passwords from the phpbb dataset:
> > 3.03% "123456"
> > 2.13% "password"
> > 1.45% "phpbb"
> > 0.91% "qwerty"
> > 0.82% "12345"
> > 0.59% "12345678"
> > 0.58% "letmein"
> > 0.53% "1234"
> > 0.50% "test"
> > 0.43% "123"
> > 0.36% "trustno1"
> > 0.33% "dragon"
> > 0.31% "abc123"
> > 0.31% "123456789"
> > 0.31% "111111"
> > 0.30% "hello"
> > 0.30% "monkey"
> > 0.28% "master"
> > 0.22% "killer"
> > 0.22% "123123"
> >
> > Why are "dragon", "master", and
> "killer" so popular? Since the phpbb dataset
> includes e-mail addresses, I'm thinking of e-mailing the
> people and ask them why they chose that particular password.
> Likewise, while I know that "trustno1" was a
> password used in the X-Files, I forget where
> "letmein" and "monkey" come from (I know
> they were used in movies/tv, I just forget which ones).
>
> | robert lemos | mail () robertlemos com |
> | science & technology journalist |
> | http://www.robertlemos.com |

      
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