Using Images as Passwords

TekkenLaw writes "According to this news on Reuters, MS is looking at images rather than plain old text for enhancing security. The key - images, which tend to make more of an impression on people than strings of text characters. This is especially interesting in context of the crappy passwords story that ran on Slashdot that ran few days back." So when you call support to get your lost password, will they ask you what your mothers maiden hair color was?

Comments

Re:um

[asavage]

did they not run this same story a couple weeks ago?

yeah, here is the link http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/12/28/134821 7

Re:What if the image is stolen?

[Account 10]

Blind people continue to use the keyboard. You can have alternatives in life, you know.

Old, Old Idea

[mesocyclone]

In keeping with Microsoft's tradition of rarely doing its own innovation...

Many years ago somebody was selling Automatic Teller Machines that used this approach instead of numeric PINs. I wish I had a reference but this was way pre-Web (1970s).

Also, this was discussed at Usenix 2000 and CrypTec 99 - see:
http://paris.cs.berkeley.edu/~perrig/projects.html #DEJAVU

and on Slashdot on Dec 28, 2001