Computer Security

Computer Security

Assignment 1

Introduction:

The purpose of this assignment is to become familiar with Message digests,

the concept of hashing a password, salting technique, and cracking passwords

with a brute force or dictionary approach.

General description:

Two lists of hashed password were generated, one with random (English)

dictionary words, and one with random passwords of increasing lengths. Both

lists were generated using the salting technique. You are required to write a

program that will crack as many of the passwords as you can. The randomly

generated list contains one password of every length, from 1 to 10.

In subdirectories we provide you the two programs that were used to generate

the password lists Passwords may contain alphabetic letters, upper or lower

case, digits, the hyphen and underscore characters. The passwords are not

in order of length. There is also a le with instructions on how to enable

unlimited strength encryption and to install the Bouncy Castle provider on

your machine. This is necessary to run the programs.

Obviously, the passwords associated with the hashed password les in the

subdirectories are provided. You need to crack the passwords associated

with the hashed password les in the top directory of the zip le.

Turn in:

A well documented source code for your program or programs, and a brief

report describing your approach to the problem, program design and tim-

ing results. Include a section explaining the salting technique, explain how

dierent your program would be if salting was not use and estimate what the

timing would be. Please use the subject line \CS5352 Assignment 1

submission" or \CS5352 Assignment 1 submission" depending on which

course you have registered. Grading:

Your program will be graded primarily on correctness (65%), but part of your

grade (35%) will be determined by the style and requested documentation.

The number of passwords you can crack will not in

uence your grade. The

penalty for a late homework is 1% per hour up to 10% per day, for up

to one week late, counting Saturday and Sunday as well.

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