When Brute Force Doesn’t Work … Try Hobbies!

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When it comes down to it, I’m a C programmer with a default to Linux commands. I use Windows, but deep down, I only want to use Linux commands, and the command line. And so the heroes of our industry include the mighty Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Brian W. Kernighan, Steve Bourne and Bill Joy. I learn C programming using Kernighan and Ritchie book:

My first book was a ‘C for Electronic Engineers’, and it was the subject that I taught at the time.

And it was in the Bell Labs in the 1970s that the Unix operating system was created by Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie:

In 2014, Leah Neukirchen discovered a ‘/etc/passwd’ file from BSD 3 Linux dumps, and set about trying to crack them.

The hashed passwords used crypt — and which is a very slow hashing method using DES encryption, and where it will take over two years to search for 7 character exhaustive search, even with…

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Prof Bill Buchanan OBE FRSE
ASecuritySite: When Bob Met Alice

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