Slashdot Mirror
The Psychology of Passwords
afabbro writes "According to this study, people's password choices put them into four groups: "Family", "Fan", "Self-Obsessed", or "Cryptic". I'm sure we're all good Cryptics here...now if only my users would stop being "Family"." And then there's the category "Stupid" for the zillions who use "Trustno1", "Swordfish", and "Password",
I beat end users with random flailings of my arms and watch for 'letter-like' shapes which rise as welt on thier bodies. Grab a new user, repeat.
I develop schemes now and again. I start with something easily recognizable, like 'So Long And Thanks For All The Fish'. Then I turn it into a 'random' password by a bunch of operations. For an example, I might take the second letter of each word (yielding oonholhi), then make characters 1 and 5 upper case, turn 2 and 6 into numbers (alphabetic value mod 10), then turn 3 and 7 into non-alphanumerics based on the keyboard layout. The pass would then be O5$hO2*i.
That is sufficiently random for 90 day use or so. It would be weakened if somebody somehow guessed my scheme, but I pick a new arbitrary scheme every 90 days when I change all my passwords. Then I just have to remember one scheme and a bunch of key phrases for all of them.
We recently implemented Clyde Hoover's npasswd password validation program, which does all kinds of password quality checks and a password history function, to prevent users from re-using their old passwords. We have incorporated npasswd into Ganymede here, along with a password aging function, and boy, what a change for our users. Users really can't have easy passwords any more, they have to change them regularly, and they can't re-use old passwords. The sysadmins in charge of network security here love it, because the odds that our users are using the same password for our network that they are using for Amazon and Slashdot is now dramatically reduced.
Npasswd is very good at what it does. Npasswd supports checks against account information and a wide variety of dictionary files, with character transpositions, reverals, etc. No more 'us3rname' passwords for our users. Here's a partial list of the dictionaries that Ganymede with npasswd checks against in our environment:
If anyone here wants to make sure your users are using strong passwords, run don't walk and get npasswd, I say.
- jon
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
On some enterprise systems, the administrator has the option to have passwords checked against a dictionary for common words, palindromes or other easily guessed passwords. If you are interested in such "smart" password software, check out npasswd at: http://www.utexas.edu/cc/unix/software/npasswd/
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
That is not nearly random enough. You need an algorithmic process that'll give you something really random.
Here's what I do. First, you take a phrase, famous or obscure. For this example, I'll use a little Shakespeare - "He hath a daily beauty in his life that maketh mine ugly."
Then, you take the second letter of each word, ignoring any single-letter words, thus producing "eaaeniihaig" in this case.
Then, you convert each letter to its decimal ASCII equivalent, giving us:
101 97 97 101 110 105 105 104 97 105 103
Then squash that all into a single number in that order, producing:
101979710111010510510497105103
Then, you take the 5'th root of that number, and drop any decimal places:
101979710111010510510497105103^(1/5) = 633436.01848182821643020050352705 --> 633436
Then, you take THAT number, and break it into pairs thusly:
63 34 36
Finally, you take the first pair and convert it back to its ASCII decimal equivalent, and that's your password. In this case ASCII 63 is "?", so your password is "?" (without the quotes, naturally).
And that, my friend, is pretty damn random.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I recommend a decent password manager for everybody, since there's just too damn many sites that require them.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
A friend of mine came up with a pretty nifty password creation scheme.. He lived on a rather busy street near a stop light.. So he would look out the window and pick out someone's licence plate number who was waiting at the light.....
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
When I worked as an intern in a rather big
corp which shall remain nameless all
passwords for all computer were "welcome".
The sysadmins claimed it made their jobs
easier because they didn't have to remember
passwords for all the machines.
I once read an interview with Clifford Stoll, who was speaking about another interview he did on camera in his apartment. Apparently, the camera crew set him up seated in front of his computer. By the time the interview was aired, he realized his monitor - and the Post-It (tm) note with his root password on it - was clearly visible in the shot.
No, the obvious retort is, "But anyone who can get inside the room can read it." At my place of bidnez, our administrative passwords all get written down, then placed in a fireproof safe, which is in our locked operations center. If you're confident that nobody is interested enough to read your passwords, that's fine. Just don't give any TV interviews.This Slashdot Poll shows that 3% of slashdot users use "password" as their password.
Yeah, if they have physical access to your home and box anyway, passwords aren't really going to stop anyone.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
He built redundant Cisco router configs for Slashdot until June 23, 2001.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Ah, yes. @Home. I get service through Comcast Cable in Indianapolis. In trying to get them to actually provide service, rather than just leaving the modem, I ended up talking to a senior level tech. I had to tell her where I was, so I did:
@Home: Where are you located?
Me: 73rd & Hoover.
@Home: What is that near?
Me: About 1/2 west of Meridian St.
@Home: No, what's close to there on the map?
Me: It's Meridian, US 31, runs down the center of town.
@Home: I don't know where that is.
Me: The middle of Indianapolis!!
@Home: But what is that near?
Me: Plainfield, Carmel, Avon, it's a big city in the middle of the state!
@Home: What state is that?
Me: Huh?
@Home: What state is that?
Me: INDIANA!
@Home: What is that near?
Me: What the hell are you talking about?
@Home: We don't have any facilities there. What is that near?
Me: What? Do you mean what States are nearby? OH, IL, MI...
@Home: OK. We have service in Illinois. I put in a request for them to finish turning on your account.
Bear in mind that I called my LOCAL cable company for this support, and ended up, on the same call, talking to this wizard, who apparently flunked 1st grade geography, and was stuck on that asinine question, "What is that near?"
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
*cough*
Like giving your password to someone doing a study on passwords?
--- Mercutio was right.
Dude, who cracks passwords any more? These days, it's far more likely the bad guys will get a root shell on a particular box before they'll crack passwords. Then it doesn't really matter any more, does it?
IMNSHO, picking ridiculous passwords is a major waste of effort. All that is necessary is to "beat" all password guessers by a reasonable margin -- ie, stay well out of their dictionaries. As long as you'll make it so that dictionary attacks are no good, you'll have pushed the weakest link in your security on to something else.
This means that pseudo-random passwords are easily good enough. No, "s00P3rS3kr1t" isn't a good choice for a password, but "SdN4N.Stm" will probably foil any dictionary.
Heck, these days if someone manages to get a shadow file, then they're almost to the point where they don't need it any more.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
The Guy: 'What is your @home password?
Me: 'excuse me?
TG: 'Oh, we have to make sure it's you.
Me: 'But I havn't set a password.
TG: 'Yes, you have.
Me: 'Um, I don't remember TELLING anyone my password.
TG: 'Oh wait, you do have the default. Do you want to set a password?
Me: 'What?!
TG: 'You tell me the password, i'll put it in for you.
Me: 'I don't really feel comfortable with that.
TG: 'Just give me any old password.
Me: 'Okay. F. &. 9..
TG: No, do you have a regular word you could use?
Me: What, like 'bob'?
TG: Okay i've set it to 'bob', how can I help you?
I was about ready to kill him at that point. Slight alterations in the passwords, but that's pretty much how it went. I was not happy.
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Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
You can make the case mixing in the mnemonic device too. For example, if you were to think the Too Many was loud, it could be mshTMp2d.
"The Internet domain name registry CentralNic who commissioned the study, claims that the most common type of password attack comes in the form of "social engineering", when a cracker poses as technical support, and contacts someone in a different department within a big corporation claiming that there is a network problem, and asks for the user's password."
Brrrnnnggg!!!
Brrrnnnggg!!!
"Good morning and thank you for calling the sales department at ACME Widget Corporation. My name is Janet. How can I help you today?"
"Good morning, ma'am. This is the tech support department. We're currently installing quizzards for the loopstep stabilizers on your PC and we need your password."
"Oh, OK. My password is J-A-N-E-T."
(tapping sounds)
"Ummm... No, ma'am. That's your login name. We need your password. The thing that you type in after your login name."
"You mean that box underneath my name?"
"Yes, ma'am. The box that says "Password" next to it..."
"Oh it's B-U-S-T-E-R. That's my puppy's name."
(tapping sounds)
"No ma'am, that isn't it either."
"Yes it is. When the 'Password' box comes up I type that in or else I can't get my e-mail."
"That's the password to your e-mail account, Janet. When you FIRST turn the computer on, a box comes up that has a text entry field... err... I mean a little white rectangular box that you can type in, underneath your login name. What do you type in that box?"
"Nothing."
(silence)
"What do you mean 'nothing'?"
"I kept forgetting my password so one of the boys from the IT department set it to Auto Save so I wouldn't have to type it in."
(silence)
"Janet, can you please transfer me to the accounting department?"
"Don't you want to place an orde..."
"SILENCE, DUNCE! TRANSFER ME NOW!!!"
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Back in high school, when SNES was big-time, my favorite password was "PotassiumIodide". See, Killer Instinct was one of my favorite games, and abbreviates to KI (all the chemists out there are shaking their heads at me)...
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Co-founder of GerbilMechs
So many people neglect the meatspace security.
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Co-founder of GerbilMechs
if you ask me.
;), well, just to be a nuisance I told another friend of mine to try a password to see if we could log in when he was away.
It's amazing to me that people in such an intellectually demanding field as programming computers have for YEARS relied upon what could possibly be the most inefficient form of personal security available: a secret word. I mean really.
Complaints aside of "stupid users!" and "idiots deserved to have their account cracked with a foolish password like that!", what do you expect? It's the same thing as the whole "Well duh, to use Linux well you need to LEARN it, it's not my fault if you're too STUPID to learn something NEW!" argument; it just doesn't hold water when applied to the general populace.
You or I may be capable of mastering every arcane command our operating system affords us, memorizing every minor inconsistancy between BSD flavor or Linux distribution, programming in fixes when we need them, etc, but JOE USER NEVER, EVER WILL. It's the same with passwords. You or I may realize the importance of a unique alpha-numeric password for each of our important sites, and have a nice table of "xreF249sfj2r43's" and "248sT358ugtds's" memorized in our head, but JOE USER NEVER EVER WILL.
So when confronted with that box that says "Choose a password, and CHOOSE ONE YOU WILL REMEMBER, PASSWORD RETRIEVAL IS VERY DIFFICULT, please enter in your password hint in case you forget it", Joe User is not only inclined, but DIRECTED to select an easily-rememberable password.
Someone please tell me how the fsck you have a "hint" to remind you the password you selected is "24885sfjsfsjf82's"?
So Joe User sees that box, thinks "oh cool" and types in for the hint "Mom's maiden name" and his password ends up being "johnson", and that's that. It works for him, he remembers it, and even if he does forget it, it's right there for him to retrieve via his hint. Joe User doesn't realize that someone with half a brain will probably guess his mother's maiden name as his password within the first ten attempts to break into his account/machine/whatever.
Also notice Microsoft and countless third parties developing programs to auto-remember and auto-insert passwords on sites you've visited before. One wonders why they don't just tie access to a unique browser hash if it's going to be that straightforward.
An example of the type of thing I'm referring to: One time I had a few friends over spending the night with me, and when we got up the next morning we all had logged onto our messengers of choice to talk to friends and see what the plans were for that day. One friend had logged off of his AOL IM account to go to the bathroom (for he knew that if he left it up, we all would've lunged at his machine to enter the standard requisite "Sup, slut?" messages to his girlfriend and mother and etc etc
To my astonishment, it worked. My FIRST GUESS. It just goes to show that most "regular people" pick a password that is so easily rememberable (a word? is now.) by them and so related to who they are that those who know them well can probably pick it out just as easily. Another one of my friend's passwords, discovered via the same method, is simply his girlfriend's name with an "i" replaced with a "1".
(btw, the password for the aformentioned friend was "bigblack", he'd been a fan of that character on the Howard Stern show)
So please, someone more intelligent than I, come along and invent a better personal identification system that doesn't rely on the good practices or intelligence of the end user.
-Chris
Amen to that. I remember a time when I was phoned up by a former employer nine months after I had left their employ, what the root password for a particular machine was (because the person I had handed over to had also left and was unreachable).
You need a systematic way of generating passwords, where the key knowledge is the system, not the individual password. Then, if you forget a past password, you can work progressively back through the system until you recover it.
As an example, you might choose a particular book, ideally in a foreign language, and use the longest word in the fifth line of each successive right hand page as successive passwords (that isn't my system, but it's analogous to my system). If you forget your current password, just look in the book. If you forget an earlier password, work progressively backwards though the book.
You can, if you want, substitute some letters with some numbers in a systematic fashion known to yourself, but IMHO that trick is now so well known as to add little extra value. I know some good geeks who always systematically replace all vowels with numbers... so if you were trying to crack their passwords, you would do the same.
And yes, I was able to tell my former employer their password, there and then on the phone, although I had changed all my passwords several times since then. Systems are good provided only you know the logic of the system.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
For all my passwords (and I have a lot of them), the only acceptable way is to pick them randomly.
And I don't mean pseudo-random, like a computer generated password, or "sounds random", from just
making up letters and digits out of my head.
I have a cup full of small squares, each one with a letter or digit on them. Pull one out, put it
back in, shake, and repeat 7 or 8 times.
A dingo ate my sig...
Are there also categories for systems administrators?
Like...
Life's Lance Corporal: Makes sure that nobody uses any software or operating system other than that used approved by the CTO. Zealously enforces the use of anti-virus software on every boot. In marketing, his tread is greeted with trembling... in engineering, with stifled laughter.
Just a Sad Bastard: Has such a pathetic life that he needs to reaffirm his own cleverness by making lists categorizing those sheep-like lusers. Not quite competent, but it's too difficult to fire him because he won't tell anyone else the root passwords of the systems he controls.
:-)
Any more?
Bottom of their keyboards?
My users stick them on their monitors!
But when I ask people to back off when entering my password/PIN, they stare at me as if I'm a madman! Then they grumble something about 'paranoia' as they finally back away.
It would appear that their own lax security affects how they think everyone else should act. I don't much mind their own obliviousness, which is what this article is about, so much as the creation of social norms around it.
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under-paid karma whore
...comes from a marx brothers movie. it's the password to get into the speakeasy. how it became a completely unrelated travolta title, I'll never know...
Back in high school (6 years ago) we got the password file for a BBS we were on. Took a cracker program and gave it a list of common first names, sports teams, cheezy stuff (opensesame, secret), and all the previous with '1' appended (because you always here people say to put a number, so people think they're sneaky and put a 1 at the end. Never a 2 or 48). Doing that, I'd say we got about 60% of the passwords. Also, "catLight" was one of them because when you sign up, it said to use a combination of words, such as catLight.
For a while I learned how to type using a Dvorak keyboard layout. So what I'd do is use a common phrase for me, but type the letters in the Dvorak sequence on a Qwerty keyboard. Or the reverse. Bingo, a relatively simple passphrase became jibberish.
Unfortunately, it was too hard to switch back and forth between Dvorak and Qwerty, and my regular typing became jibberish as well. So I quit doing that, and went back to the slow ol' Qwerty way.
It was a cool system while it lasted.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
About a year ago there was some sort of discussion here about methods of password generation. Someone had the best system I have seen, and I have been using it ever since. It's based on the use of simple math formulas, such as 8+7=fifteen or 24/8=three . It has many advantages. It's relatively long, uses shifted characters, and isn't hard to remember. Another advantage I discovered after we started using it regularly is that you can verbally relay the password to another admin who might have forgotten it and that admin (who knows that the answer to the equation is spelled out) can then use it but others within earshot who heard it will not understand how to use it.
A tip of the hat to whomever it was here that originally posted that method a year or so ago.
maru
Users, generally, have too many passwords to remember. And no one wants to subscribe to MS Passport. Writing down the password, as well, is equally foolish.
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However, to be a good SysAdmin, you really need to try to find SOME way for your users to have both a secure password, and one the can remember. (OR you'll be resetting it constantly).
I advise my users to think of a sentence to use as a mnemonic device, and make their password off that. ie, "My Sysadmin Has Too Many Piercings Today" - their PW would be mshtmp2d. I know, it's not as good as, say, "54kaSgHJ3", but most crack programs will take a hell of a long time on a NICE computer to break it, and the users feel more comfortable with it.
Really, the point is to make the password not easily guessable, not write it down, but easy for the user to remember.
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The Internet domain name registry CentralNic who commissioned the study, claims that the most common type of password attack comes in the form of "social engineering", when a cracker poses as technical support, and contacts someone in a different department within a big corporation claiming that there is a network problem, and asks for the user's password.
Another option is to pretend to be doing a study of such things, and ask thousands of companies for their user's passwords.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
I have post-its with fake passwords scattered all over my office. I figure anyone who tries to hack my machine will waste a lot of time trying them, and will be so absolutely sure that one of them must work that in the end he will be too emotionally exhausted from frustration to try a more intelligent approach.
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
...the idiots that write their passwords on post-its and stick them to the bottom of their keyboards?
BlackNova Traders
--As a Sys Admin I have a sort of love/hate relationship with passwords. My users are required to remember no less than 3. (NW, Notes, Sabre.) Some of the savvier have managed to use the same password everywhere. Recently an edict was passed down from the PHBs to make everyone's password the same. Mostly so the PHBs could access anything. I showed them the error of this thought process.
--"Then they can get eachother's stuff and yours!"
--"But, they're not me, how could they get in?"
--"If I have the keys to your house I could get in to it."
--"Oh. But they'd have to sit at my desk!"
--"Not really." (Of course I could restrict where users can log in from but they don't need to know that!)
--But honestly I feel for these people. I have a ton of passwords too. Some are hard some are easy some I don't know thanks to cookies. The point being ther ARE far too many passwords.
--I have been trying to envision a swipe card system wherein all a user's passwords are stored yadda yadda. Clearly theft of this would be bad, but so is losing your work ID swipe card. Perhaps this is coupled to a typed password for the card. (Which my users would write onto the card with a Sharpie.)
--Of course the promise of fingerprint recognition (lop off the finger trick?) and retinal scans would make this idea obsolete in several years but something has to be attempted to lessen the password load.
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This
More information (like the words) can be found elsewhere.
My mod points, please :)
--
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
login: dbolger
pw: StalkingNataliePortman
Uh.. yeah.. there *have* been some problems at OSDN lately, but don't worry we're working on the problem. Everybody just needs to email their slashdot username/password to me and I'll check to make sure it hasn't been 'compromised'.. Have a nice day!
air and light and time and space
1... 2... 3... 4... 5...
I specifically chose it because that's what I have on my luggage.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
And then there's the category "Stupid" for the zillions who use "Trustno1", "Swordfish", and "Password".
Yeah, those stupid people. Haha, they're so dumb.
*Quickly loads preferences page to change password*
Or I was I should say. One of my previous employers had fourteen NT/Win2K and 4 Solaris boxes all with the combos of administrator/password and root/password. Nice eh? Their web server, ftp servers, domain controllers, everything. I tried twice to get them changed. I even started to put better passwords on new machines, but the CTO kept changing them.
"I don't want to have to remember 18 different passwords." You don't Genuis, give the same password if you must, but make them tough.
To this day, if I want to call an old co-worker, but can't remember their number, I look it up on their intranet.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
As seen on Computer Stupidities:
Student: "Hey, how do I lodge in to Hotmail?"
Me: "You've got to type in your username and password in those fields that say 'username' and 'password'."
Student: "I don't have one of those."
Me: "You need one to log in to Hotmail."
Student: "It's 'LODGE' in."
Me: "The term is 'log in,' and you can't log in without a username and password. I can help you create one if you'd like."
Student: "Um, excuse me, but I THINK I know what I'm talking about. It's LODGE in, and I don't want a username and password, I just want to get some email!"
I just went back to working after that, and he left complaining about how "crappy" the computers in the lab were, after trying to "lodge in" for ten more minutes.
Of course, there are hundreds of stories out there just like that one.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Do the karma whore dance!
I'm sure we're all good cryptics here
Do we really know that /. passwords are more secure than average. Everybody e-mail me your /. password. I'll summarize the results.
Bruce Perens: Don't bother; I have yours already.
If you've ever played the "guess that vanity licence plate" game, this is an automatic way to come up with good passwords. You take a phrase or expression you know you can remember and obfuscate it as you might if you wanted that same phrase on a vanity licence plate but need to squash out characters so it will fit. For example, you might take the phrase "rose garden" - you could write it out as "rOzgRdN" ( where password is case sensitive of course ) so that when you read it you pronounce the upper case letters as the name of the letter and the lower case as the sound the letter makes. Of course 1337-ifying your passwords has a similar effect.
Of course the nice thing about this is you can keep all your goofy old passwords - family names, celebrities and ego-boosting cliches, just make them difficult for a password cracker to grab out of lists of plain-text.
Another trick that I've always liked is to use chess notation. Think of any move in a game of chess, one that you can remember easily and write it out using one of the conventional chess notations. For example the move "white queen captures kings rook 3" would be "wQxKr3".
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Everybody keeps suggesting that writing down passwords is 'stupid' and something an 'idiot' would do. This is not always the case.
Here, in my home office, I have every single password I need (about 20 of them) written down in pencil on a single sheet of notebook paper. It's tucked in a relatively obscure location in my files.
Is this a security threat? Not really. Somebody would have to bust into my house and ruffle through my paper files in order to find them. Unlikely, at best.
What would be considerably more insecure than writing them down is to keep them in a text file on my machine. Somebody hacks my machine across the internet and I'm toast.
So next time you folks start throwing out terms like 'stupid' and 'idiot', think it through a little bit, OK? Saves you from the embarrasment of being the stupid one.
I think someone discovered the password to my other account, 'Anonymous Coward'. People keep using it to post annoying messages under every article.
Talk about "social engineering"... ;)
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suwain_2