Security Basics mailing list archives
Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability
From: Doug.Janelle () Thermo com
Date: Fri, 27 May 2005 12:34:12 -0400
In the real world, we have to acept that, not matter how easy we try to make it for them to remember passwords, users *will* write them down. In these cases, I encourage them to at least obfuscate things a bit...don't make it obvious what they mean. (IOW: for G**'s sake don't write "ID=myname, PW=Free4All".) ID's are usually easy(er) to remember, so just write the password w/o the "PW=". Throw in an extraneous character or two...leave one or two characters out...transpose several characters...anything to make the written data useless to anyone who might come across it. dcj2
He claims that prohibiting users from writing down their passwords is bad for security. His main point is that if users are prohibited from writing down their passwords, they will use the same easy to guess password everywhere.
Current thread:
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability, (continued)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Nick Owen (May 30)
- RE: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Andrew Aris (May 31)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Nick Owen (May 30)
- RE: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Miguel Dilaj (May 27)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Nick Owen (May 30)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Mihai Amarandei (May 30)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Doug . Janelle (May 27)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Dan Tesch (May 30)
- RE: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Bob Kurth (May 27)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability John Blackley (May 27)
- RE: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability KWajda (May 30)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Doug . Janelle (May 30)
- Re: Linking Password Length to Write-down probability Mark Burnett (May 30)