Slashdot Mirror
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.
A year or so ago, I found this little beauty: PassFace Technology -- Give it a try. You click on people's faces to get in.
What was interesting was that in finding that URL, I went back to the site for the first time in over a year, and was able to log-in no problem. I remembered my combination of faces.
There's definitely something to this technology!
rOD.
Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
one of the problems that many people have with "strong passwords" is *NOT* their lack of a strong kinesthetic memory- I can ``remember'' any password simply by typing it: sound familiar?
:)
:D)
Problem is that this has NOTHING AT ALL to do with how you actually pull out that memory. I mean, having this strong kinesthetics allows you to keep that password in your head, but it does nothing for pulling it out (unless you ALWAYS use the same password... more on this later)
What triggers that memory really has to be one of four things: A sound, an image, a phrase (written), or a touch. That's not true, at least with me (functional keyed-retreival) but most people at least fall into those four.
This is a cue that your mind uses to pull out those memories at the appropriate moment. The feedback starts and you can whip out your password completely automatically, right?
Some "realistic solutions" to these problems include: BIOMETRICS - which don't require ANY memory, SINGLE LOGIN - which limit the number of cues needed, ASSYMETRIC-KEY - which relies on math, etc, etc.
I say "realistic" because people have used them and they DO work. They don't affect that memory pathway in and of itself, but instead rely on more durable pathways (e.g. outside of the person
Unrealistic methods? Pictorial passwords. Besides the obvious that they're useless to the blind, many (dare I say most? nah, I couldn't find those numbers) people lack a visual eidetic. This means that they're very easy to confuse with similar images - because they cannot be used as triggers for their memory- They simply cannot remember seeing that.
Surely, they can remember the memory of seeing, or the act, maybe if they described it to themselves (common: turning a visual cue into an audio one, but this is time consuming and rarely works for long) - point being, it pushes WAY too much emphesis on only one cue.
With our current method, I gain some visual cues; input fields on the left, on the right, a popup, etc. I also gain some functional cues (mail related? do I know these people? am I these people? was this just a test?)
I then turn all these cues into the blinding flash of realization that sends my fingertips into a frenzy typing out the appropriate login and password for wherever I'm at. (except on slashdot, i'm a wuss... i use cookies
My cues may not be the same as everyone elses' but everyone does have cues. I think that changing the focus of WHAT we remember is less important than changing the cues by which we DO remember.
(There, I think that makes more sense now)