Passwords are here to stay

At least for the short to medium term. That is the, quite obvious, conclusion drawn in a Newsweek article entitled "Building a Better Password."  The article goes inside the CyLab at Carnegie-Mellon University to understand how passwords may one day be replaced. It is interesting reading all around.

The article is not without some "really?" moments though, such as this quote:

The idea of passphrases isn't new. But no one has ever told you about it, because over the years, complexity—mandating a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation that AT&T researcher William Cheswick derides as "eye-of-newt, witches'-brew password fascism"—somehow became the sole determinant of password strength.

Actually, I do believe someone did tell you about it. Five years ago now, in fact.

Published Sat, Oct 10 2009 10:54 PM by jesper
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Comments

# Larry Seltzer said on 11 October, 2009 05:28 AM

I wrote about it then too (www.eweek.com/.../Will-Passphrases-Foretell-the-Death-of-Pa55W0rd5 - and I probably linked to your article).

The problem with passphrases is that a lot of sites (Amazon i think is one) don't let you use a long-enough password or embed spaces.

# Mick said on 11 October, 2009 05:13 PM

Jesper..  The issue here isn't the text, it's the writer.  My biggest pet hate is journo's writing about security when they have no experience in IT let alone Security.  Typically this results in what we've seen here.. misinformation provided to the public.  The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia continually do this as well and despite a constant complaints refuse to hire an IT or InfoSec Professional to pen their IT articles.

It doesn't matter how hard we work... our work is being undone by these clowns.

# Candee said on 12 October, 2009 07:02 AM

Indeed. I remember it well.

It was one (of many) practices I adopted as my own. And my told my users (and anyone else who would listen) about it.

Good work!

Candee

# admin said on 13 October, 2009 09:08 PM

Let me know if you get this?

Test.