Re:How to securely encrypt a file with an insecure password ...
by jffry on Wednesday January 19, 2022 @06:39PM
(#30002088)
Yeah, if you a very common password like "hunter2" or "Password1", then even with a KDF that takes 100ms to generate the key, it's still very feasible to run through the 100k most common passwords and compromise it within a few hours.
If we're talking a more random but still short password (for example, just 8 random alphanumeric characters is log2(262+10)8 = ~48 bits), then the KDF becomes very attractive to help skyrocket the brute forcing cost to something more similar to trying to brute force the 256 bit key instead.
Ignoring the extra time for decryption there's no difference between a unique low-entropy password that takes 2 years to bruteforce and a high-entropy password that takes 2 years to bruteforce.