I NEED YOUR HELP!
 

I have a client who has asked me to password protect his internet connection. He feels his secretaries spend to much time browsing/shopping rather than researching and downloading (forms, updates) He wants a program that will require logging in to browse, and he wants the password to change everyday. He asked if I could put together an algorithim for the password, that goes a little some like this: the password should be directly correlated with the day of the week. If its monday the pass should be bunny*, tuesday should be mortar* and so on so each day has a different password. He also wants a number at the end, one that is +5 of whatever day it is. So if its monday the 10th, the password would be bunny15, or tuesday the 30th of november, would be mortar5. Make sense? this is a very basic description of what he wants, with a lot of room for change. Maybe the first word can be determined by the month. and the number is just 6* whatever day it is. I don't know of a program that could do this without writing it from scratch, and i wouldn't know where to begin on writing a password protection script for IE. Any suggestions would be most helpful. Thanks everyone!

Sounds like a bit of a fool's errand... if your client thinks that he can memorize the password algorithm, but his secretaries won't be able to figure it out within a month, he's sorely mistaken.

Just have your client go through the History files after they go home, and discuss any issues when he finds them.

Sounds like you need something like an access control proxy server setup.

This can be done but your client would have to manually change to password everyday. Either that not tell his secretaries what it is.

awesome, thanks for feedback guys. We are going to check out the history file and see if we feel a proxy would be necesary. Any other suggestions would be very appreciated.

k, got an update on what he would like. He is not concerned with the word, simply the number. So the text can always be "pass" as long as the number is changing daily. He wants mondays number to be multiplied by 3, tuesdays by 5, wed by 8, and so on and so forth for a non sequintial number for each day of the week. He then wants that number multiplied by the day of the month. So lets say its monday the 12th. The password would be "pass (3*12)" or effectively "pass36" any suggestions?

Write an app yourself - doing something simple like that in C/Perl/etc. would take all of 10 minutes, if that.

Slightly off topic,

Perhaps by seting up user accounts for the secrataries with restrited zone internet access he coul limit their browsing?
It's my understanding that the sites in the restricted zone list can be edited so that if the client was lawer for example that needed constant access to the city and state court pages for legal breifs and such, they could be added to the list by simply typing the root domain (blahblahblah.com) and all subpages are then allowed under resrticted zone browsing while still not allowing free roaming on the web.

That sounds like the best solution. I think he needs to come up with a better password system though, my 10 year old brother could figure that one out in about an hour.

use netnanny or something to control browsing habits ?

arch13 has the right idea.

If this guy won't give in tell him "yea, I can do it, but I'll have to write the program from scratch. (scratch your head as you say this) That'll cost ME about $3000, so I'll have to charge you $4000 just to make profit. It'll take 6 months."

Change the numbers as you see fit, this really is a fool's errand. This guy must be straight out of Office Space. I wonder how much time he spends thinking about this password idea. I bet his wife has heard quite a bit about it.

hey Stu, next time you need some help, make your title a bit more descriptive? I clarified it some, but you'll get more people if you are clear on what you want/need.

Here's another problem with his scenario. Clearly, the secrataries have some legitimate reasons for using the internet, otherwise he'd just their net access off entirely.

What happens on the day your client is out sick?

Honestly, the best solution is that he sits down with his secretaries and explains that the internet is there for them to do work on, nothing else, and that he's noticed a dramatic increase in the amount of time they spend surfing the web, so if this continues, he'll take steps to cut pay based on how much they surf, etc.

But honestly, it's just too childish of a situation to actually try to solve through installing software,etc.

It does seem a bit of a fools errand, but everytime i help him he always reminds me "not to look at porn." Like i have the minimals to look at porn in my clients office.. But from what i heard there was a fucked up incident in the past where someone was looking at "illegal" porn on his comp and He was really upset about it. So now he is very anal about letting people browse. The funny part is, I just installed his DSL for him par his request.. I thought he wanted the internet available to them. All of these have been great ideas, I will run them all by him and see what he says. thanks again for the help guys.