How to burn a password into your brain
It turns out that it can actually be surprisingly easy to train people to memorise a 56-bit
password or phassphrase, two Microsoft researchers found.
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Is it *really* such a bad idea to use a password twice?
We regularly warn you against using the same password for multiple accounts. But if you memorise one really long and complex password, isn't that enough? No! Here's why...
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AT&T hit by insider breach; "change your passcode" it warns
AT&T, the giant US telecom, says it fired an insider for having thumbed through customer accounts without authorization and potentially slurping customers' taxpayer IDs, driver license numbers and more.
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If you’re anything like me you’ll have literally dozens of logins and accounts which require a password for authentication, and having lots of passwords plus a bad memory is not exactly an advantageous combination.
Anyone can easily create a very strong password in just a matter of seconds simply by typing a long string of random characters. Try inputting something like -%!Kln*0)?+0ubCN<:nH563 – into the password strength meter at How Secure Is My Password and you’ll probably be told it will last for something like 168 gazillion trillion years. That’s fine but it also raises 2 important questions: how the heck is anyone ever going to remember a password like that, and do we really need passwords that will survive until well beyond our own demise? The answers are pretty obvious aren’t they?
Of course, there are many methods for saving/storing passwords but each comes with its own particular baggage and generally involves some degree of risk or inconvenience. What if we could create a strong password which we could also easily remember…here’s how:
The trick is in utilizing unique identifiers; words, names and numbers which are unique to your own personal environment, not on public record, and recognized only among family and close friends. Things such as nicknames, petnames and motor vehicle registration numbers. The latter is a particular favorite of mine, the family car’s registration number is indeed unique, not widely known, and generally close at hand.
Let’s create an example – for the purpose of the exercise we’ll use a married couple and their nicknames: let’s say the husband’s nickname is “Paulie”, the wife’s nickname is “Mabs”, and the family car’s registration number is 256-HWK. Now simply combine all three to create a very strong password which can also easily be brought to mind: pauliemabs256-HWK, mabspaulie256-HWK, or any combination.
For more critical authentications, such as PayPal, you can include just a little extra capitalization for added security: PaulieMabs256-HWK, MabsPaulie256-HWK.
So you see, you do not necessarily need overly complicated passwords in order to achieve optimum security, just a simple combination of ‘unique identifiers’ will do the job nicely, and also be relatively easy to remember
MUCH MORE TO COME ..... |
