Tide Foundation aims to boost password security

While passwordless security remains just out of reach, a non-profit organisation has developed a mechanism that it says makes passwords exponentially more difficult to crack

The Tide Foundation has announced a security mechanism for encryption that the non-profit organisation claims makes passwords 140,000 times more difficult to crack.

Called splintering, the mechanism is the only encryption scheme to break usernames and passwords into tiny pieces using decentralised technology, with the aim of providing an unprecedented level of protection.

According to the developers, this technique makes it “tremendously” more difficult to reconstruct one complete password, let alone a greater number using either reverse engineering or common brute force attack methods.

Ahead of the official launch, the developers challenged hackers to crack a splintered password with a reward of 1 bitcoin (about £8,500) and bragging rights as an incentive, but after three months and more than 6.5 million attempts, no one has succeeded.

Tide developed splintering as one of several open-source technologies designed to form the backbone of a new, secure personal data economy with the aim of securing data privacy for businesses, consumers and data seekers such as marketing and research firms.

Comprising a team of engineers and entrepreneurs, Tide is developing an overarching technology infrastructure that aims to give control of personal data back to the consumer and create a broad opportunity beyond simply making passwords millions of times more difficult to crack.

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