Sunday, October 29, 2006

World of Passwords

The life we live is getting more complex, and our will & memory is being constantly challenged with tasks to do, things to plan, goals to accomplish, etc. Among the requirements that I find really annoying is the need to memorize an ever growing number of keys a.k.a passwords to access various protected areas of own personal and professional life, to name a few:

  • Key to access your computer, at home, at work, anywhere else
  • Key to access your bank account
  • Key to access other financial accounts, i.e. retirement, investment, savings, etc
  • Key to your online profile with every vendor, such as eBay, Amazon, or you’re hosting service
    If you work in the high-tech, add to that many other keys to various systems and applications

If you think that’s not much, take this:

  • A key to access your car
  • A key to re-set your car radio
  • A key to access your airport express-check’in profile
  • And last but not the least, a key to remember any forgotten keys.

For the smarter and the well organized, who store all of these keys into a secure file for the sake of better management of memory resources, they do need another key to access such file :-)

I'm growing tired of keys...and i hope one day we either drop keys and live in an open society based on trust, or build one single key for all, such as finger print or retina scan.

8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I worked in a company who use finger print to access the main building, I need to put my finger every time(take care about it,no burst or something like that must occur !) but there are one stupid thing : I must enter also a code :-)

To comment about the main topics: yes I'm too tired about codes and passwords,if my Firefox hangs I will "die" because it remembers the majority of my credentials in the web.
In the professional field ,especially in IT one I will kill the person who imposes that we have to change password every month and that the old one must not be similar to the old ! ti el wahed bessif chaddhom ,thebblou y3awed wahed akher,mnine bech nebtaker,donc on revient au probléme de l'imagination d'un mot de passe qui m'énerve !

There are also passwords for:
-Cellular phone
-Satellite receiver
-Any intelligent devices who need protection...

ya napo hatta ana hbelt barcha jorret hal "passwordet" elli mayoufaouech,khalli 3add if you change from a company to company,manahkilekch hbelt: tous a retenir encore une fois (username+password)
(applications,emails,...)!

2:50 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ah,I forget,some people uses that smart method to renew their passorwds by making three passwords and they rotate over them when there are a need to change
or also,adding an incremental number(if no similarity between passwords is required)

The security of a password is a problem,here's some basis rules to make solid one's:
-enough long to be unbreakable(at least decrease the possiblity to break it),more than "8 charachter".
-enough hard to remember to be hard to guess it
-use a password that can be typed quickly, without having to look at the keyboard. This makes it harder for someone to steal your password by looking at your keyboard.
-contains very mixed characters: letters,numbers,special characters...
-Do not give it to anyone :-)
-Store it only in your mind !
=> here a link to test your password and more general other rules

http://www.securitystats.com/tools/password.php

3:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Napo, I can't agree with you more. My worst nightmare is when I try to access one of these sites I did not access for a long time and can't remember the password.
I cannot keep one password for all my accounts because they have different policies (min 8 chars, at least one special char,..) and then IT policy for changing my domain account every six months kiks in and I have to find another combination.
Windows now allows smart card login and a lot of solutions based on fingerprint and iris/retina scanning solutions are being deployed in some high security site. That could be a good solution if it becomes cheap enough to be implemented on mobile device like a cell phone that can be connected using bluetooth to a computer and can be used to access all our accounts online and offline.

3:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

@samsoum:
the finger print/iris recognition are not enough reliable,so we must wait more.
Also I think that putting all access codes in one place ie a cell phone is not very secure,since if it's stolen,all the related life of the owner is exposed: private accounts on web sites,in bank,in daily life ! and imagine if someone make an intrusion to the phone via bluetooh connection for example and stole the passords like the case with computers in a network!

2:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

aymen, once the iris/print solution becomes reliable 100%, it would make sense to use a center location as a vault, since it is unbreakable or to be realistic hardly breakable.

5:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

samsoum,I worry when criminals will cut fingers as we could see in some futuristic movies :-)

Even with such methods there will be always holes of security,for example we could take print finger of an important person when he put his hand over the table in which there are hidden captor just down,or when this important someone go to toilet we put a mirror and we could save it's eye signature to make a copy of it :-) CRACKERS will have always very much work in the future,rabbi m3ahom !

11:42 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oups,the last comment was mine,ie aymen's one ,I put samsoums nickname by mistake :-)

sorry samsoum

11:43 AM  
Blogger YASMINA said...

The best one is the key to remember the forgotten keys!!
My solution is to have only one password for everything!

2:53 PM  

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