Transparency & Privacy

The Transparency Agenda of the 2010/1 UK Coalition government promises to revolutionise government, public services and public engagement, by ‘holding politicians and public bodies to account, reducing the deficit and delivering better value for money in public spending, and realising significant economic benefits by enabling businesses and non-profit organisations to build innovative applications and websites using public data’, to quote the then Prime Minister. This is an ambitious programme with laudable aims, yet it naturally has limits.

Password cracking for fun and profit

Abstract Passwords are the most common form of authentication, and most of us will have to log in to several accounts every day which require passwords. Unfortunately, passwords often do not do a good job of proving who we are, and come with a host of usability problems. Probably the only reason that passwords still exist is that there often isn't a better alternative, so we are likely to be stuck with them for the foreseeable future. Password cracking has been a problem for years, and becomes more problematic as computer become more powerful and attackers get a better idea of the sort of passwords people use. This presentation will look at two free password cracking tools: Hashcat and John the Ripper, and how even a non-expert on a laptop (i.e. me) can use them effectively. An introduction to some of the research surrounding the economics and usability of passwords will also be discussed. Note that the speaker is not an expert in this area, so it will be a fairly informal since I'm sure you're all tired after a long term.