The Home Password Cracker

Database Weekly for October 22, 2022 Problems displaying this newsletter? [View online](. [Database Weekly]( The Complete Weekly Roundup of SQL Server News by SQLServerCentral.com Hand-picked content to sharpen your professional edge Editorial  The Home Password Cracker There have been password-cracking tools available to anyone for a long time, and they have often been helpful in assessing the strength of passwords that your users might choose. They can also be helpful in convincing management to require better security in your organization. While this might not be something you spend a lot of money on, perhaps there are a few others in your organization that might let you borrow an Nvidia RTX 4090. If you get 8 of them in a system, [you can probably crack an 8 character Microsoft NTLM password in under an hour](. That was what a group found when testing the new GPU. This likely doesn't mean we change security policies, or that someone can guess our password in an hour. It does mean that the world of computing hardware continues to advance and that can make security challenging. We ought to ensure that our privileged users follow strong practices and protect their systems and their credentials. I used to periodically run a password cracker against SQL-authenticated logins in our databases to be sure that strong passwords were in use. My boss was alarmed when we found passwords like "password" and "12345", but the effort to get people to change was high. Eventually, he asked me to just stop cracking passwords. I know passwords aren't perfect, but they ought to be somewhat strong and long. We might not be able to prevent everyone from unauthorized access, but we can stop making it easy with the simplest of common password choices. Steve Jones - SSC Editor [Join the debate, and respond to the editorial on the forums](  The Weekly News All the headlines and interesting SQL Server information that we've collected over the past week, and sometimes even a few repeats if we think they fit. Vendors/3rd Party Products [Data Masking in Principle]( This is the first of two articles to describe the principles and practicalities of masking data in databases. It explains why an organization sometimes needs masked data, the various forms of masked data we can use, the sort of data that needs to be masked, and the potential pitfalls. [Introducing the MySQL INSERT statement]( In the previous article in this series, I introduced you to the SELECT statement, one of several SQL statements that fall into the category of data manipulation language (DML), a subset of statements used to query and modify data. Another DML statement is the INSERT statement, which lets you add data to MySQL tables, both permanent and temporary. 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[SQL Server Extended Event Duration Filtering Can Make Troubleshooting Frustrating]( From Erik Darling Data Shortness, Shortness I use sp_HumanEvents to troubleshoot all sorts of SQL Server issues. Most frequently, I used it to troubleshoot stored procedure performance like this: EXEC sp_HumanEvents @event_type =... Analysis Services / BI on the MS Stack [Correlating Analysis Services Errors with Measures]( From Prologika (Teo Lachev's Weblog) This blog builds upon my previous “Resolving Tabular Conversion Errors” and applies to Analysis Services in all flavors (Power BI, MD, and Tabular). In the scenario I described in... Azure SQL [Azure SQL Database Performance comparison part 5 of 9: General Purpose]( Welcome to my blog series on Azure SQL DB performance. In this blog I’ll write about my findings with the Azure SQL DB General Purpose Provisioned tier. Quite a mouth full. 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The... Conferences, Classes, Events, and Webinars [Pre-Conference Workshop and Sessions at PASS Summit]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs I’m pleased to announce that I will be presentin... [(Livestream Replay) Configuring Incremental Refresh PBI-Tools - with Mathias Thierbach](20Incremental%20Refresh%20PBI-Tools) From Havens Consulting ABSTRACT You've heard about Power BI Increme... [Monthly Database Health Monitor Training + Questions and Answers]( From Steve Stedman Improve you knowledge and skill set with this FREE Database Health Monitor training and Q&A. This training will be held every month on different days of the week and... [DevOps 101 Webinar: Key Concepts and Terminologies]( As you embark on your own Database DevOps journey you are going to hear many new concepts and phrases, but what do they mean and why are they important to consider? Join Grant Fritchey live as he breaks down the key concepts and terminologies around Database DevOps. [Expert-led PASS Data Community Summit Pre-cons]( Spaces are still available for next month's PASS Data Community Summit pre-conference sessions - but they’re booking up fast! Choose from 18 deep-dive full day pre-cons, featuring some of the best minds in the data industry, covering everything from technical processes to personal growth. Register now [Sign up to PASS Data Community Summit 2022]( There's still time to register for Summit and unlock access to over 300 sessions. Join peers and industry leaders in the data community homecoming. Get $200 off on the 3-Day Conference pass (in-person) with code REDGATEVIP or 50% off on the 3-Day online pass with code RGVIPONLINE. Register now. DMO/SMO/Powershell [How to Use a PowerShell Array]( From Petri IT Knowledgebase A PowerShell array is a data structure designed to store... Data Visualisation [from dashboard to story]( From Storytelling with Data More and more organizations are turning to dashboa... 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PowerPivot/PowerQuery/PowerBI [Composite Models in PowerBI -- The solution to poor search performance in SSAS]( From SQLServerCentral Blogs With the release of composite models in PowerBI, Ive been able to solve a long-standing issue with SQL Server Analysis Services: text search performance. In this article I am... The... [Two Ways to Create Single Value Input Slicers in Power BI!]( From Havens Consulting Learn about two techniques for creating a single value input Slicer in Power BI Desktop! The first method will apply a technique outlined in a SQLBI article (link below)... [Refresh a Power BI Dataset using Microsoft Power Automate]( From MSSQL Tips Learn how to refresh a Power BI dataset by integrating Power Automate into the report. Product Upgrades and Releases [Introducing Geo-Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) for Azure SQL Managed Instance backups]( From Azure SQL We are happy to introduce a new backup storage red... 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[Solving the CanSum Problem in R]( From Curated SQL Tomaz Kastrun knows if you can sum those together: CanSum problem is a problem where a given array of integers (nums) and a target integer (target),…Continue readingSolving the CanSum Problem... SQL Server Security and Auditing [Lesson Learned #242: The server principal "xyz" is not able to access the database "Yzxxx"]( From Azure Database Support Blog Today, I worked on a service request that our customer got the following error message: Msg 916, Level 14, State 4, Procedure dbo.StoreProcDemo, Line 0 [Batch Start Line 0] -... Security News and Issues [What Is the Difference Between Identity Verification and Authentication?]( From Dark Reading: Dark Reading News Analysis Identity verification and identity authentication are neither synonymous nor interchangeable, and implementing both is essential to fighting fraud. 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[Drop All Tables in SQL Server and Generate a List of Objects to Drop]( From MSSQL Tips Learn how to drop multiple SQL Server objects with just one command and how to quickly generate a list of objects to drop. Tech News [Microsoft makes Tabbed File Explorer, additional Windows 11 22H2 features available in preview](RSSbaffb68) From All about Microsoft Blog RSS | ZDNet Microsoft is delivering more promised Windows 11 22H2 features and promising the ability to right-click on the Taskbar to jump to Task Manager will be added soon. [Microsoft starts rolling out the annual Windows 10 feature update, Windows 10 22H2](RSSbaffb68) From All about Microsoft Blog RSS | ZDNet Microsoft is making Windows 10 22H2, its annual feature update, available to mainstream users on select devices starting today, October 18. [Latest Microsoft Layoffs Reportedly Target Close to 1,000 Workers]( From IT Pro - Microsoft Windows Information, Solutions, Tools Microsoft expects a big slowdown in revenue growth for its fiscal first quarter. Tools for Dev (SSMS, ADS, VS, etc.) [Notepad++ Macro and SQL Scripts]( From Callihan Data I recently saw a comment about building SQL scripts with Excel. While I haven’t gone that route before, the comment did remind me of a quick and dirty way...  [RSS Feed]([Twitter]( This email has been sent to {EMAIL}. To be removed from this list, please click [here](. If you have any problems leaving the list, please contact the webmaster@sqlservercentral.com. This newsletter was sent to you because you signed up at SQLServerCentral.com. Note: This is not the SQLServerCentral.com daily newsletter list, and unsubscribing to this newsletter will not stop you receiving the SQL Server Central daily newsletters. 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