

- #Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated generator
- #Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated update
- #Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated software
- #Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated crack
Its single source of entropy was the current time. "The most critical one is that it used a PRNG not suited for cryptographic purposes.
#Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated generator
"The password generator included in Kaspersky Password Manager had several problems," the Donjon research team explained in a blog post on Tuesday. In the sense that I’ve never seen so many broken things in one simple piece of code. I was going to laugh off this Kaspersky password manager bug, but it is *amazing*.
#Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated software
Three months later, a team from security consultancy Donjon found that KPM didn't manage either task particularly well – the software used a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) that was insufficiently random to create strong passwords.įrom that time until the last few months of 2020, KPM was suggesting passwords that could be easily cracked, without flagging the weak passwords for users.
#Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated update
In March 2019, security biz Kaspersky Lab shipped an update to KPM, promising that the application could identify weak passwords and generate strong replacements. Kaspersky published a security advisory about the issue on Apand, after waiting a few months for users to update the Kaspersky Password Manager, Bédrune published his report.Last year, Kaspersky Password Manager (KPM) users got an alert telling them to update their weaker passwords. If the time of account creation is known, there would only be around 100 possible passwords. He also explained that sites often show the time that an account is created and, if the time is known, brute forcing passwords would be even easier. Brute forcing them takes a few minutes,” said Bédrune. “There are 315,619,200 seconds between 20, so KPM could generate at most 315,619,200 passwords for a given charset. The problem with this approach is a password generated anywhere in the world by a user of the Kaspersky Password Manager would be the same as the password of all other users who generated a password that same second. Kaspersky used the current time to the second as the seed in a Mersenne Twister pseudorandom number generator. The main issue with the suggested passwords is the single source of entropy used.
#Kaspersky password manager fixes that generated crack
While this is a good idea, it does mean that if it can be determined that an individual is using Kaspersky Password Manager, it would be possible to deduce the bias and crack passwords more quickly. When an attempt is made to crack a password, it would likely take much longer due to these atypical letter combinations. To make it harder to guess the randomly generated passwords, Kaspersky made certainly commonly used letters appear less frequently and less frequently used letters appear more often, as well as increasing infrequently used letter combinations. Kaspersky used a complex process to generate passwords, which was intended to make it difficult for hackers to guess passwords however, the method used actually made it easier. Jean-Baptiste Bédrune of the French cybersecurity firm Ledger Donjon has published a technical write-up about several security flaws he discovered in the Kaspersky Password Manager, with one of the most serious in the pseudo random number generator used by the solution.


The reason for the update and alert is now clear. The problem was resolved by Kaspersky in October 2019 with a Kaspersky Password Manager update and users were sent an alert telling them that they should regenerate their passwords. Unfortunately for users of the Kaspersky Password Manager, that feature was making it very easy for hackers to brute force those passwords. Password managers have a feature that generates random passwords to make it easier for users to create strong, unique passwords for all of their accounts.
