Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Passwords: How easy are yours? How often do you change them?

Ice|Burn · 03-02-2010, 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Martian

The attack they're describing is a dictionary attack, and it's very common. A simple script, 20 minutes or so and if the website in question doesn't have specific measures in place to counteract it, an account can be cracked.

I do generally follow secure password policy. My only conceit is that I do reuse passwords to some extent. I have a list of them memorized and will select one more or less at random for a new account. One of the benefits of this system is that if I should forget what password goes with which account or website, I only have to guess a limited number of times before I hit on the right one. The monumental downside is that if someone were to somehow obtain a list of all my passwords they'd have access to basically everything.

The principles of a strong password have been understood for a long time. No words, mix of numbers and letters, mixed case, at least 8 characters. If more people followed these guidelines there'd be less cybercrime. It's as simple as that.

All true.

The problem with "secure" passwords is that they aren't human friendly. our brains are not wired to be able to use a completely random string of characters as anything usable. We assign meanings and use visual clues to help us along the way. We've all seen the email where the first and last letter of a word or correct but the middle is mixed around. Yet when we read it we still read it as being 'correct' because our brains complete the gap so to speak.

I would love it if everyone used the truly secure password method. However if that happened I suspect Post-it notes would become hard to find in a hurry.