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Adobe also stored hints users created for their passwords. That means that an attacker knows not only if the same 8 characters are used for multiple passwords but also has some hints for guessing them. That means that common password portions should be easy to recover and that any user may be "compromised" by someone else using a part of the same password and providing a good hint. As an example, a password having three hints "Big Apple", "Twin Towers" and "If you can make it there" is probably "New York" or a simple variation on that. The weakness here is that no decryption and therefore no hard cracking has to take place, you just group the passwords by their encrypted blocks and try to solve them like a crossword puzzle. These weaknesses have already been used to presumably identify a password used by {{w|Edward Snowden}}, as discussed at [http://7habitsofhighlyeffectivehackers.blogspot.com/2013/11/can-someone-be-targeted-using-adobe.html 7 Habits of Highly Effective Hackers: Can someone be targeted using the Adobe breach?].
 
Adobe also stored hints users created for their passwords. That means that an attacker knows not only if the same 8 characters are used for multiple passwords but also has some hints for guessing them. That means that common password portions should be easy to recover and that any user may be "compromised" by someone else using a part of the same password and providing a good hint. As an example, a password having three hints "Big Apple", "Twin Towers" and "If you can make it there" is probably "New York" or a simple variation on that. The weakness here is that no decryption and therefore no hard cracking has to take place, you just group the passwords by their encrypted blocks and try to solve them like a crossword puzzle. These weaknesses have already been used to presumably identify a password used by {{w|Edward Snowden}}, as discussed at [http://7habitsofhighlyeffectivehackers.blogspot.com/2013/11/can-someone-be-targeted-using-adobe.html 7 Habits of Highly Effective Hackers: Can someone be targeted using the Adobe breach?].
  
The examples are not taken from the actual leaked file, since that [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/how-an-epic-blunder-by-adobe-could-strengthen-hand-of-password-crackers/ uses a different format], and the examples are evidently cleverly crafted to make a nice crossword-like puzzle, which can be solved as shown in the Passwords section below.
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It seems the examples are not taken from the actual leaked file as that [http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/11/how-an-epic-blunder-by-adobe-could-strengthen-hand-of-password-crackers/ uses a different format].
  
 
As mentioned on http://filosottile.github.io/analyzing-the-adobe-leaked-passwords/ the data in the comic isn't real and contains a hidden message. If the "user password" hashes are Base64 encoded, they read:
 
As mentioned on http://filosottile.github.io/analyzing-the-adobe-leaked-passwords/ the data in the comic isn't real and contains a hidden message. If the "user password" hashes are Base64 encoded, they read:

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