Why passwords dont work

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Or, click here to add this blog to an RSS feed.

Email Address:. The OpSec Blog Security and privacy information and advice at home and abroad. Share: Facebook Twitter Reddit Email. Like this: Like Loading Posted in Security Tagged with blog , e-mail , facebook , passwords , security , twitter.

Wi-Fi Hacking ». Leave a Comment Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:. You'll likely add a "1" at the end. Is it capital letters? You'll probably make it the first one in the password.

And special characters? Frequently exclamation marks. The meter also offers other advice based on what you type in, such as reminding you not to use a name or suggesting you put special characters in the middle of your password. In an experiment, users created passwords on a system that simply required them to enter 10 characters. Then the system rated the passwords with the lab's password strength meter and gave tailored suggestions for stronger passwords.

Test subjects were able to come up with secure passwords that they could recall up to five days later. Facebook admitted in April that the passwords of millions of Instagram users had been stored on their systems in a readable format - falling short of the company's own best practices, and potentially compromising the security of those users. Late last year, question-and-answer website Quora was hacked with the names and email addresses of million users compromised.

And Yahoo! No wonder that Microsoft announced last year that the company planned to kill off the password, using biometrics or a special security key. Not only would getting rid of passwords improve security, it would also mean IT departments would not have to spend valuable time and money resetting forgotten passwords. More Technology of Business. Philip Black is commercial director at Post-Quantum, a company designing powerful encryption systems for protecting data.

He agrees that passwords are already a weak point. That's unmanageable, so people end up using the same passwords, and they become a vulnerability.

New rules laid down by the EU are designed to deal with that issue. But where do they come from? Wired investigated the subject, and found that the idea of computer passwords may have originated at MIT, on its Compatible Time-Sharing System.

Since multiple people were using a single computer, passwords allowed them to differentiate one user from another. But even then, the MIT team knew passwords weren't secure — they toyed with the idea of using a question-based authentication system, so instead of typing a password you'd be asked a question only you could answer, but decided against it because of the resources required to store all of that personal data.

So, in sum, our passwords are terrible because computers in the 60's had tiny hard drives. Hit the source for the full piece, which also includes what may have been the first computer security breach. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.