Pictorial Passwords

Stone Rhino writes: "No longer do you need to remember passwords. Now, thanks to graduate students at Berkeley you merely need to pick out the right pieces of abstract art. There is a story on it at the New York Times. However, there is a problem with it that I see: 5 images from a set of 25 means 53,130 potential combinations. This would be much easier to crack by brute force than a standard alphanumeric password with its billions of possibilities and millions of likely choices." Maybe you have to get the sequence of images correct? If so there are some six million combinations, still weaker than a optimum password but probably stronger than the passwords most people choose (usually their significant other's name). There's another article on passwords in that same NYT edition.

Comments

Uncrackable Password

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody will ever find out my password, because it's "swordfish"!

Images?

[Ace Rimmer]

Sure, why not? At least one penguin would be in any Linux user ;)

Re:Images?

[Unknown Bovine Group]

Hmmm 25 abstract images huh. I have a great idea. The first image could be two diagonal lines, touching at the top with a horizontal line halfway down connecting them. Oh the second could be a vertical line with two right-facing humps. The third, a 3/4 circle with the opening on the right.....

implications..

[Xzzy]

> than the passwords most people choose (usually
> their significant other's name)

So does this mean that the harder a person's password is to crack, the less likely they are to have a sex life?

Re:implications..

[bornie]

Nah, don't think so. If they have no sexlife they'll choose their mothers name.

Re:implications..

[rastachops]

>So does this mean that the harder a person's
>password is to crack, the less likely they are
>to have a sex life?

Not if their significant other is known as "PC" ;)

From a Tech Support view

[scott1853]

Customer's have enough trouble understanding "click the button with the X in the upper right corner".

I wouldn't know where to begin trying to describe what pictures to use for their password... "Ok, now choose the picture that looks like a moose being sucked into a vortex".

Reg. Bypassed URLs for those articles:

[thesolo]

First Link: http://college.nytimes.com/2001/12/27/technology/c ircuits/27PBOX.html

Second Link: http://college.nytimes.com/2001/12/27/technology/c ircuits/27PASS.html

Re:login required

[Adversive]

>> (For the record, yes I have registered a couple of times. And forgotten the password.

Then all the better reason to be interested in an article about easy-to-remeber passwords. :)

My Favorite Quote On The Second NYT Article:

[awrc]

"Even high-ranking executives may act on naïve impulses when it comes to choosing a password"

Even high-ranking executives? Make that especially.

Try telling this one to a friend

[NiftyNews]

Can you imagine having an emergency in our future-tech age?

"No Bill, it's Black Guy, Asian Guy, Samoan Woman, Black Guy with the scar, White Guy with glasses! Hurry up before the Holodeck explodes!"

Re:Try telling this one to a friend

[Skirwan]

...they have scanners that can scan your DNA... why to they need the cheesy passwords to activate the self destruct mechanism on the ship, the ship could scan the captain, first officer etc. to verify their identity...

Because then all the people from the alternate universe could just waltz on in and blow up the ship - it would be chaos, man, chaos!

--
Mod me down, I'm way off-topic.

Re:Similar to Passface

[benwb]

different parts of the brain for face recognition and other forms of visual recognition

Re:Jeebus!

[Uberminky]

Actually here at IU where I go to school, they have a system that checks your password against all sorts of crazy things and rejects any sort of matches. It runs your choice backwards and forwards, 1337 speak, in many (MANY) different languages, etc, and if it finds *anything*, it makes you pick another one. Took me forever to come up with something that it didn't reject somehow. I started thinking "Geez, if there are THIS many passwords that I can't use, the search space is probably lower now than it would be brute forcing common words!"

Re:Jeebus!

[PurpleBob]

There's a joke which involves that. A link to it on one of those lame joke sites: here

"...Because of the complexity of the password selection rules, there is actually only one password which passes all the tests. To make the selection of this password simpler for the user, it will be distributed to all supervisors. All users are instructed to obtain this password from his or her supervisor and begin using it immediately."