Understanding passwords

- [Instructor] A password is something you know, … it's a series of numbers and characters … and it provides access control. … If you obtain someone's password … you'll have the same rights as the user. … Passwords are used to provide a form of authentication … like presenting your driver's license at the bank … when you want to cash a cheque. … Organizations seek to secure their passwords … for their users. … Even still over the last several years … there have been multiple reports on compromised passwords. … Some methods store passwords using a hash value. … Malicious actors use a variety of methods … to attack passwords. … One way is by using a rainbow table … which is a database of many hashed passwords. … If you have the hash, … you match it against the database to find the password. … Salting the password with a random string … will protect against a rainbow table attack. … The salt is stored in the database … along with the hash or as part of the hash string. … However, an improved method …