I had an opportunity to sit with Per Thorsheim, co-founder of PasswordsCon about next week’s Passwords14 Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If you haven’t checked it out before, PasswordsCon is the world’s premiere technical conference that is just focused on the security of passwords and pin codes.
PasswordsCon is a one-of-a-kind event: bringing together folks whose specialty is cracking and defeating password security with security experts whose interest is in shoring up protections for sensitive data. This year’s conference, which is sharing space with the B-Sides Las Vegas Conference on August 5 and 6.
PasswordsCon has earned a reputation for being the launching pad for some eye-popping new tools for password cracking. Back in 2012, we reported on a 25 GPU device that radically lowered the bar to cracking even the strongest passwords protected with weaker encryption algorithms, like Microsoft’s LM and NTLM, obsolete.
Among other things, the Conference will feature a password hashing competition aimed at discovering new and better methods for storing password values and talks on compliance and governance issues related to passwords and the psychology of password choice and use.
Check out our Hangout below or over on YouTube, in which Per talks about what he’s looking forward to at next week’s show, as well as issues like the adoption of two-factor authentication and the impact of Internet of Things technologies on traditional password schemes.
