Generating hard passwords is actually kind of pointless.
Yes, a hard password means it's difficult to brute force the authentication or crack a password hash you've stolen. But if you just use unique passwords for each service you use, it multiplies the work required to crack all the accounts.
The biggest risk to your accounts and your data is simply having everything in one basket. The other biggest risk is saving passwords, but nobody wants to memorize a bunch of difficult passwords. So it's actually easier to have a whole bunch of kinda similar easy-to-remember passwords, so you don't have to save them.
See, if you use Windows, chances are you've had some malware before. And if you've had malware, everything you type, everything you've seen or stored, including live browsing sessions, are controlled by somebody else. So doesn't really matter what your password is or how many you have if somebody's on your PC extracting your password database.
But nobody wants to think about that. So they craft themselves a false sense of security, using password generators and copying files to the ends of the earth. Truth is, if someone wanted to, they could probably ruin your day. The only safe backup is an offline backup, and the only safe password is one that's never saved anywhere.
Once you've chosen to use unique passwords everywhere (and you're insane not to these days), you're effectively committing to some form of password storage, so whether or not "hard passwords" are pointless, they're just easier. I just use 1Password to generate strong 16char passwords because it's easier/quicker than "thinking up something random enough and recording it somewhere suitable".
Sure there's the "all eggs in one basket" problem with my 1Password database, but it's got a strong (~25char) pass phrase, and even then there's a class of passwords I store only on my head. My 3 banking passwords, my pgp key pass phrase, my root passwords, and my DNS registrar passwords.
One thing I think people often overlook is that your DNS registrar access credentials trump your email's two factor auth - if I can change your MX records, nothing you've done to secure your email account matters - I'll just get everyone to send your password reset requests to a mail server under my control…
The whole point of a password manager is that it is convenient. Sure, the database may be exposed to malware, but that applies to any password that gets used, so the additional risk is pretty small.
No, the additional risk is enormous. If they get your password database they get all of your passwords. If you don't use a password database, they only get the passwords you use, which (unless you sign into everything every day) should not be all of your passwords.
I would expect the malware to sit there quietly until it collected at least a few interesting passwords. So it sort of depends on what the attacker is trying to do and how many interesting accounts the attacked has.
Yeah, I figure you've got a good month before they do something with the collected accounts, or more depending on who they sold it to.
At the very least, never save a password to a critical account, such as a financial account or a root/administrator password. I could care less if someone takes over my Twitter and Facebook (if I had them) but am highly paranoid about accounts which will actually affect my life.
"more than one physical back-up, in more than one location"
And to take that even one step further, one of the onsite versions that we do is to a fireproof drive. (Other versions are physically offsite as you mentioned).
Anyway on the onsite version the fireproof drive is physically disconnected (USB) from the computer after the backup is complete. (It could be powered off but that would spin up and spin down it seems less detrimental to not do that..)
But it gets even better. There is also hidden safe that contains hard drives only (which are encrypted). The safe is left unlocked (it's not physically attached and could be hauled away). In the unlocked safe, in addition to the hard drives, is some money (cash). The theory being that if someone breaks in and easily opens the safe (if they find it) they will take the money and leave the drives alone.
(This dates back from the same practice being done with cash registers you leave a little money so the thief doesn't trash your place. I know this will raise questions as far as having a tempting cash stash but it is known by only a select group of people and there are pros and cons to any approach obviously.)
(It could be powered off but that would spin up and spin down it seems less detrimental to not do that..)
Uh, actually, you want to do that. First of all, spinning down does not do anything bad - it actually saves the life of the drive. Secondly, the whole point of backup tape robots is to constantly re-check tapes to see if they're readable, and report bad tapes to be replaced. You should really be turning off the drive, turning it back on, and doing a full disk block check to see if there's any corruption. Welcome to the nightmare that is backing up petabytes of enterprise data.
An unlocked safe? The whole point of a dummy safe is to make it seem like the real safe, so you keep it locked. And there's no reason they wouldn't take the extra two seconds to pick up some valuable intellectual property with their cash. What kind of crack are you people smoking, and what is your business so I can avoid it in the future?
"First of all, spinning down does not do anything bad - it actually saves the life of the drive."
That's your opinion I disagree. And it's not the spin down anyway. It's the spin up. You've also got the cycle on the on off switch for that matter as well as the power surge. Trivial but it's there. All in all the solution is to cut the cord. You also don't know if we are doing this procedure 1 time per month or 7 times per hour. Do you? So you make an assumption on what you think we are doing.
"Secondly, the whole point of backup tape robots is to constantly re-check tapes to see if they're readable, and report bad tapes to be replaced."
What in the world are you talking about? We don't have "backup tape robots" we have a hard drives that we backup our data to. You have no idea of how much data we are talking about nor do you know what the purpose of the backup is. Thanks for your concern and assumptions.
"nightmare that is backing up petabytes of enterprise data"
You are solving a different problem that we are working on. We don't have petabytes of data.
"And there's no reason they wouldn't take the extra two seconds to pick up some valuable intellectual property with their cash."
Once again you are making assumptions as far as the thief we are protecting against. You don't know where we are located and you don't know anything about, once again, what we are protecting.
"What kind of crack are you people smoking, and what is your business so I can avoid it in the future?"
Seriously, who writes stuff like that?
Your comment illustrates what happens when people try to learn something from what they read online (as PG says "don't believe what you read in online forums"). I've illustrated what we do which fits a particular purpose. You do something else. Neither of us provides (either time or space wise) enough detail for anyone to decide for themselves only gives information so they can further think about this.
Comments
Generating hard passwords is actually kind of pointless.
Yes, a hard password means it's difficult to brute force the authentication or crack a password hash you've stolen. But if you just use unique passwords for each service you use, it multiplies the work required to crack all the accounts.
The biggest risk to your accounts and your data is simply having everything in one basket. The other biggest risk is saving passwords, but nobody wants to memorize a bunch of difficult passwords. So it's actually easier to have a whole bunch of kinda similar easy-to-remember passwords, so you don't have to save them.
See, if you use Windows, chances are you've had some malware before. And if you've had malware, everything you type, everything you've seen or stored, including live browsing sessions, are controlled by somebody else. So doesn't really matter what your password is or how many you have if somebody's on your PC extracting your password database.
But nobody wants to think about that. So they craft themselves a false sense of security, using password generators and copying files to the ends of the earth. Truth is, if someone wanted to, they could probably ruin your day. The only safe backup is an offline backup, and the only safe password is one that's never saved anywhere.
Once you've chosen to use unique passwords everywhere (and you're insane not to these days), you're effectively committing to some form of password storage, so whether or not "hard passwords" are pointless, they're just easier. I just use 1Password to generate strong 16char passwords because it's easier/quicker than "thinking up something random enough and recording it somewhere suitable".
Sure there's the "all eggs in one basket" problem with my 1Password database, but it's got a strong (~25char) pass phrase, and even then there's a class of passwords I store only on my head. My 3 banking passwords, my pgp key pass phrase, my root passwords, and my DNS registrar passwords.
One thing I think people often overlook is that your DNS registrar access credentials trump your email's two factor auth - if I can change your MX records, nothing you've done to secure your email account matters - I'll just get everyone to send your password reset requests to a mail server under my control…
The whole point of a password manager is that it is convenient. Sure, the database may be exposed to malware, but that applies to any password that gets used, so the additional risk is pretty small.
No, the additional risk is enormous. If they get your password database they get all of your passwords. If you don't use a password database, they only get the passwords you use, which (unless you sign into everything every day) should not be all of your passwords.
I would expect the malware to sit there quietly until it collected at least a few interesting passwords. So it sort of depends on what the attacker is trying to do and how many interesting accounts the attacked has.
Yeah, I figure you've got a good month before they do something with the collected accounts, or more depending on who they sold it to.
At the very least, never save a password to a critical account, such as a financial account or a root/administrator password. I could care less if someone takes over my Twitter and Facebook (if I had them) but am highly paranoid about accounts which will actually affect my life.
Just to chime in: The only safe back-up is actually more than one physical back-up, in more than one location.
"more than one physical back-up, in more than one location"
And to take that even one step further, one of the onsite versions that we do is to a fireproof drive. (Other versions are physically offsite as you mentioned).
Anyway on the onsite version the fireproof drive is physically disconnected (USB) from the computer after the backup is complete. (It could be powered off but that would spin up and spin down it seems less detrimental to not do that..)
But it gets even better. There is also hidden safe that contains hard drives only (which are encrypted). The safe is left unlocked (it's not physically attached and could be hauled away). In the unlocked safe, in addition to the hard drives, is some money (cash). The theory being that if someone breaks in and easily opens the safe (if they find it) they will take the money and leave the drives alone.
(This dates back from the same practice being done with cash registers you leave a little money so the thief doesn't trash your place. I know this will raise questions as far as having a tempting cash stash but it is known by only a select group of people and there are pros and cons to any approach obviously.)
(It could be powered off but that would spin up and spin down it seems less detrimental to not do that..)
Uh, actually, you want to do that. First of all, spinning down does not do anything bad - it actually saves the life of the drive. Secondly, the whole point of backup tape robots is to constantly re-check tapes to see if they're readable, and report bad tapes to be replaced. You should really be turning off the drive, turning it back on, and doing a full disk block check to see if there's any corruption. Welcome to the nightmare that is backing up petabytes of enterprise data.
An unlocked safe? The whole point of a dummy safe is to make it seem like the real safe, so you keep it locked. And there's no reason they wouldn't take the extra two seconds to pick up some valuable intellectual property with their cash. What kind of crack are you people smoking, and what is your business so I can avoid it in the future?
"First of all, spinning down does not do anything bad - it actually saves the life of the drive."
That's your opinion I disagree. And it's not the spin down anyway. It's the spin up. You've also got the cycle on the on off switch for that matter as well as the power surge. Trivial but it's there. All in all the solution is to cut the cord. You also don't know if we are doing this procedure 1 time per month or 7 times per hour. Do you? So you make an assumption on what you think we are doing.
"Secondly, the whole point of backup tape robots is to constantly re-check tapes to see if they're readable, and report bad tapes to be replaced."
What in the world are you talking about? We don't have "backup tape robots" we have a hard drives that we backup our data to. You have no idea of how much data we are talking about nor do you know what the purpose of the backup is. Thanks for your concern and assumptions.
"nightmare that is backing up petabytes of enterprise data"
You are solving a different problem that we are working on. We don't have petabytes of data.
"And there's no reason they wouldn't take the extra two seconds to pick up some valuable intellectual property with their cash."
Once again you are making assumptions as far as the thief we are protecting against. You don't know where we are located and you don't know anything about, once again, what we are protecting.
"What kind of crack are you people smoking, and what is your business so I can avoid it in the future?"
Seriously, who writes stuff like that?
Your comment illustrates what happens when people try to learn something from what they read online (as PG says "don't believe what you read in online forums"). I've illustrated what we do which fits a particular purpose. You do something else. Neither of us provides (either time or space wise) enough detail for anyone to decide for themselves only gives information so they can further think about this.
My definition of 'Safe' is: "Protected from or not exposed to danger or risk; not likely to be harmed or lost".
It's not likely both your live copy and offline, off-site, backup will be wasted at the same time. One is 'safe'. Two is redundant.