special charecters

[yourdeadin]

hey like i donno what to call then but here goes
open note pad

press alt and then press 12345
u will get 9
PRESS 123456789 and you get " § "
press 01202515843 and you get " ƒ"

like what are these and can we use them in p/w

coz if we do that then we can sure prevent a brute force it can we???

[sec_ware]

Hi

as per Ascii:

You just have discovered how to print ascii-coded characters [1].
For example:
ALT-48 prints a "0"
ALT-560 also prints a "0". Why: because 560-2*256 = 48.

There are 256 characters. Any multiple of 256 is substracted such that
the remaining number is between 0 and 255.

12345 - 48*256 = 57. And ALT-57 is a 9.


as per passwords:

yes, good point, you might be able to use special characters also in the password.

usually people use about 60 different characters, ie the number of possibilities
to bruteforce is 60^{length_of_password}.

with that ascii-trick, you can use about 200 different characters (note, some are control characters
and should not be used). then, the number of possibilites is

200^{length_of_password}, which is much higher and more difficult to bruteforce given
a certain length_of_password.

However, in my opinion, its easier to keep a long-enough password using the 60 characters
in mind instead a difficult combination of ascii-codes.

Cheers






[1] http://www.asciitable.com/

[nihil]

Please remember that some systems/applications do not permit the use of certain characters, so it would depend very much on what the password was for.

For example AO supports a much more sophisticated password than GMail.

Another thing is to test it afterwards ...........I have seen systems that appeared to accept 16 characters, but would actually let you in with the first 8

Here is a link that might be of interest.........

http://lastbit.com/pswcalc.asp

It will tell you how long it will take to brute force your password with a 100% probabliity (1.0) Obviously, if they get lucky then it will take less time, also it depends on the power (speed) of the machine used.

Cheers