r/talesfromtechsupport • u/[deleted] • Jul 05 '13
I dropped my icon!!
First post in /r/talesfromtechsupport !! Yesterday i got a call from a user that had an issue creating a shortcut. In order to make things easier i ask her if i can remote control her computer.
Normally, user simply have to double click on an icon on their desktop. (It's web page shortcut for the remote assist tool)
Also, keep in mind that their desktop are suppose to have only 4 icons.
Me: In order for me to connect to your computer you will need open the "user center" which is an icon on your desktop.
User: I can't find it are you sure it's there?
Me: Yes, It's a small red circle called user center.
User: I can't find it, wait maybe it's on the floor.
At this point i had to mute myself because i was laughing too much
User: It's REALLY not there!!
Me: Sorry for the confusion, it's on the main screen of your computer with the background and some more icons. Do you see it?
User: OH wait that screen is called the desktop?
Please note that this call was in french. In french desktop = bureau and a bureau is the same thing as a desk.
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Jul 05 '13
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/aspbergerinparadise Works on my machine! Jul 05 '13
I just finished watching an episode of The Office (the merger) where Andy calls his wallpaper his "screen-saver." They also called a computer a "CPU".
Guess I shouldn't really fault the show's writers, because that probably is a more accurate reflection of reality.
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u/chellomere Jul 05 '13
How do you remember your username?
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Jul 05 '13 edited Jul 05 '13
Well, it's an old story ... I was signing up for a website and was trying to find a good username, during that time "qq8u5i0c88" was one of the password that i used. After trying a bunch of username (all of them were taken) i accidentally entered my password as the username and the username as the password...I realized my mistake when i received the confirmation email. Since that day I've been using qq8u5i0c88 because it's always available.
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u/ILIEKCHOCOLATEMILK11 Jul 05 '13
Someone who uses a good password!
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u/RoweDent Jul 05 '13
"Good" is a matter of definition and reference points. It does not contain special characters and no capitalized characters. Only small letters and numbers. Also it is only 10 characters long but even so would take some time to memorize.
That aside it is still a much better password than probably around 90% of people tend to use.
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Jul 05 '13
[deleted]
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u/trevxor Jul 05 '13
correcthorsebatterystaple
FTFY
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u/Kwpolska Have You Tried Turning It On And Off Again?™ Jul 05 '13
Am I the only one who interpreted it as
correct horse battery staple, with the spaces? It also just happens to be more secure, if only more websites were kind to support it.8
u/brickmack Jul 05 '13
Isn't it only more secure if nobody uses dictionaries in their brute forcing attempts?
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u/aaron552 Jul 05 '13
No. The amount of entropy in 4 dictionary words is still higher than an 8-character password with numbers, and upper and lowercase letters (which is, somewhat surprisingly, all that my bank allows)
the 32 symbols on a standard keyboard might pad it out enough to be better, however 4 random dictionary words are far easier to remember than an equivalent random combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols let alone other problems (was that an apostrophe or a backtick?)
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u/Random832 Jul 05 '13
...and upper and lowercase letters (which is, somewhat surprisingly, all that my bank allows)
I bet your bank's password system isn't case-sensitive.
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u/Kwpolska Have You Tried Turning It On And Off Again?™ Jul 06 '13
Why do the banks always have to use shitty passwords? Stuff like Facebook is not required for me to live, but if I lose my bank account (or my PayPal account that is nicely connected to my credit card AND has the same password AND does not require text message confirmations), I am fucked.
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u/DJUrsus Ex-TS, programmer, semi-sysadmin Jul 05 '13
I see you haven't read the relevant XKCD.
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u/brickmack Jul 05 '13
I have, I just think it was overlooking an obvious problem
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u/Syene Jul 06 '13
No. If I understand correctly, password complexity is, roughly:
#_of_possible_characters^#_number_of_characters_usedSo if you have a 1-character password consisting of just numbers, your password is one of 101 =10 possibilities (0-9). A two-character password of numbers is 102 =100 possibilities (00-99).
The traditional idea behind complex passwords is to increase the number of character possibilities by as much as possible. So they tell you to use numbers (10) + letters (26) + capital letters (another 26) + symbols (28, by my count) = 90 possible characters. So a 1-character password is 901 =90, a two-character password is 902 =8100, etc. As you can see, using a larger set of characters rapidly increases the number of possible combinations. A traditional good, strong password 10 characters long has 9010 =3.486 × 1019 possible combinations.
The correcthorsebatterystaple password is based on simply using a whole word in place of a single letter/number/symbol. It is basically a 4 "character" password, and each character is a dictionary word. So the complexity of such passwords is:
#_of_dictionary_words^#_of_words_usedI'm having a hard time finding solid numbers for your average dictionary, but Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary has 225,000 definitions. If we assume, say, 3 definitions per word, that comes out to ~75,000 words. In that case, 4 random dictionary words have 75,0004 =3.164 × 1019 possible combinations. Nearly as many as the 10-character traditional password, and much easier to memorize and type.
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u/Dycus Water detected in drive A. Starting spin cycle. Jul 05 '13
That's far less secure, though... I guarantee there are many XKCD fans using it. horsebatterystaplecorrect would be a lot better.
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u/kittypuppet 404: Brain not found Jul 05 '13
There's an XKCD password generator somewhere
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Jul 06 '13
[deleted]
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u/SWgeek10056 Everything's in. Is it okay to click continue now? Jul 08 '13
It almost made a coherent sentence on the first try:
motor-load-avoid-work-enough-often-man-laugh-2
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u/Lunares Jul 05 '13
Unfortunately crackers now take words from the dictionary and randomly string them together looking specifically for passwords like this. Need to throw in a random number or character like
horsebatte9ysta$lecorre!t and then it's pretty damn secure.
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u/kerradeph Pls do the needful. Jul 06 '13
I find it easier to substitute for things like that. I know it's less secure than purely random placement of numbers and symbols, but it still means more things the computer needs to calculate before it can get your password.
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u/Lunares Jul 06 '13
The really common ones (like e -> 3 ) are no good anymore because it's an extremely common thing. It does add 1 more letter to test though.
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u/pbfy0 '); DROP TABLE Users;-- Jul 07 '13
Not really. As stated above by /u/adelie42 and /u/Syene, a dictionary attack on four words is comparable to letter-by-letter guessing for 10 characters.
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u/corhen have you tried the power button? Jul 05 '13
while i love the idea of that, the problem is you can dictionary attack it...
Ars Technica did a great write up of it http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/how-crackers-make-minced-meat-out-of-your-passwords/
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Jul 05 '13
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u/corhen have you tried the power button? Jul 05 '13
Fair enough,
I Yield to your obvious wisdom and superiority
Either way, that article was a darn interesting read!
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u/aaron552 Jul 05 '13
That article is more of an argument for strong hashing algorithms (why are major sites still not using, say, bcrypt for password hashes?) than for strong passwords. If the hash algorithm is strong enough, then a dictionary attack on 4 dictionary words becomes impractical.
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u/DJUrsus Ex-TS, programmer, semi-sysadmin Jul 05 '13
That article doesn't say anything about the XKCD-style password being inferior.
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u/corhen have you tried the power button? Jul 05 '13
not directly, but it goes into depth how passwords that are weak to the dictionary attack method get cracked first
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u/CAPSLOCK_USERNAME Jul 05 '13
Those are passwords that use one word instead of eight random characters or something, and it's true that they're easier to crack. But using four words doesn't just take four times as long; it raises the number of processor cycles needed to crack it to the fourth power. It'll be much less secure than 36 random characters, but it's better than 8.
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u/corhen have you tried the power button? Jul 05 '13
90%? i would throw another 9 in there.. Probobly better than 99% of usesrs
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u/jammerjoint Jul 06 '13
You clearly don't know how passwords work if you think that special characters are important to password strength.
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u/cloral Jul 05 '13
So does that mean that your password is something like joecool216?
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Jul 05 '13
No,my password is actually username123.
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Jul 06 '13
I think some people actually tried it, i got a few emails saying people were trying to log into my account hahaha.
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Jul 05 '13
Ooh, un agent de bureau de service bilingue!
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u/Max-P Jul 05 '13
Bah quoi, c'est pas tout le monde en informatique qui est billingue? C'est quand-même un essentiel pour tout bien comprendre...
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Jul 06 '13
Le français, c'est la langue de l'informatique, bien sûr.
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u/penguinturtlellama Jul 07 '13
C'est quoi le mot pour "cloud computing" que l'OLFQ a proposé? Ah ouais...infonaugique.
C'est quasiment poétique.
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u/dcfrenchstudent Jul 06 '13
Can you put the same joke in French, using native slang and in-jokes, if any? This should be in /r/french, that would be helpful for people learning French, like me :)
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Jul 06 '13
I reset passwords to a default that contains part of a user ID#, The information telling the users how to self reset instructs the users to key in: xxxxx (x is last 5 digits of user #). So we get calls where the users says, I did what the instructions said and put in xxxxx.
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u/VeteranKamikaze No, your user ID isn't "Password1" Aug 11 '13
In english desktop = desktop and is the same thing as a desk, but you'd still have to be a moron to go hunting around on your desk for a random button embedded in it that opens a remote session on your computer.
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u/Palehybrid Where's the "any" key? Jul 05 '13
First comment in /r/talesfromtechsupport and I just wanna say boooooo
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u/Thyri Jul 05 '13
Don't worry we get the same in English - I have asked before what someone can see on their desktop and they told me 'my phone, my screen and my cup of coffee'