this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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At a glance, the passwords the LLMs created looked secure, much like those that a password generator might spit out. But that’s exactly where the problems arose: Although the AI-generated passwords appeared to be complex and safe to use for securing online accounts, they were actually quite predictable upon closer inspection.

All three LLMs exhibited clearly identifiable patterns in how they created these passwords. These patterns included repeated character strings, predictable password structure, frequent reuse of similar characters, clear biases toward certain numbers and letters, and even duplicate passwords in some cases. Although the AI-generated passwords looked random, they really weren’t. This could easily create a false sense of security if you were to use these predictable passwords for your online accounts.

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[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 90 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 15 minutes ago) (7 children)

Why does everything have to be LLM, like why cant things sometimes just be algorithmically generated like my AI-free password manager does?

I wonder if there's AI-powered password managers on the market now lol. If so and if customers, I would mirror Zuck's snide "thuh dumb fucks" setiment when people trusted him

ZXCVBN algorithm has never failed me. I can generate passwords that would take 1 quadrillion guesses/second hackers over 90 million years (testing 1 quad/sec) on the reg

[–] Naich@lemmings.world 27 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I remember the days before hardware random number generators, when pseudo random number generators caused fuck ups by not actually being random. Now people are re-inventing the stupid way of doing it with AI.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago

It blows my mind hackers still found ways in with just that one fuckup

[–] artyom@piefed.social 9 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

There's AI-powered everything now for no reason other than because when they slap those two letters on it, their stocks go up. A lot of times there's not even any AI involved.

I remember CES 2022 when derb8uer found these "AI PC cases" and when he asked about why, they said "because you can put an AI PC in it". And that's when I knew it was a bubble. Because that's the kind of shit that happened with dotcom. Companies slapping "dotcom" on their names and their stocks would skyrocket for no reason.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Stox go brrrrr

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 5 points 6 hours ago

I always say I'm not interested in asking an LLM to add 2 + 2 for me. Of course my managers are always pushing us to use LLMs and coworkers keep suggesting we replace efficient, testable, and consistent processes with AI. If you're going to use it at least think of scenarios that are hard to code for and it would take you at least 10 min to solve.

[–] BrainBow65@lemmy.world 17 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

It's worse than just using a new tool though. By definition LLMs use the statistically most likely option (with minor variation for flavor). People are literally asking a statistics bot what password can I use that is the most likely?

[–] grue@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

That's a good point: it's not just that LLMs fail to give you an optimal password, it's that they're inherently designed to give you a pessimal one.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I was gonna say that. They gonna give you a recycled pattern

I mean, like, what is an effective/"good" password if not an unrecycled non-pattern??

[–] Madrigal@lemmy.world 8 points 8 hours ago

But…but Magic Box™

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 0 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

While “routing” of prompts between specialist models and traditional APIs does offer more efficient and reliable outputs, it also

A. requires more elbow grease than one massive generalist model, and

B. doesn’t help you avoid paying API licensing fees by obfuscating their outputs into the blackbox weights of your proprietary model

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It just seems like a password manager is an infinitely better tool. Like to the point i severely judge and question the sense of someone who seeks to reinvent the wheel for something so crucial

[–] Septimaeus@infosec.pub 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Oh for sure. I was just answering in case you wanted to know.

Future versions of AI tools will likely use routing to do a variety of tasks more efficiently and accurately. But until then? It’s a jinn to those who would wish away every single chore they lack the patience to comprehend including, unfortunately, information security.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Its honestly crazy to me. I have it down to such an art that Incouldnt imagine giving up my unilateral control or sole custody of that data

[–] Eyekaytee@aussie.zone -2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Why does everything have to be LLM

Not everything is, it's just Lemmy is obsessed with them so you're going to see it come up a lot

[–] orclev@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago

Unfortunately it's not just Lemmy. Corporations are obsessed with LLMs as are a lot of the people working for them. I daily get messages and meetings about LLMs in one way or another and it drives me nuts because it keeps interrupting actual work. In the span of like two months it went from something that was mentioned maybe once in the last year to be 90% of what everyone is talking about.