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Inkblot Passwords
TechnoPope writes "Microsoft Research a new way to get users to not only develop, but remember more secure passwords can be achieved through using inkblots. Because of how the human brain works, you can show the same pictures to different people and almost always come up with different passwords. What's even crazier, is that people generally are able to remember the complex passwords. Sounds like a major breakthrough in security."
How strong are these passwords. For each blot, might you guess what somebody will see? Some seemed more obvious than others.
I like the face password system. With this system you remember some faces, something we are very good at doing. Then you are shown tablets of faces, around 16 of them. Your face is among them and you click on it -- 4 bits of data. You do this several times to generate a strong enough password.
The really interesting aspect of this system is, unless you are a skilled police sketch artist, you can't tell other people your password. Even if they torture you, you can't reveal it. Many people will find themselves unable to even describe the faces in their set, they just know them when they see them.
You might be able to go to the terminal and sketch or digitally photograph your faces to tell somebody else, but if this is used as an access control system, for example, with a guard watching you as you enter your code, it's hard to do. Thus the military is interested in such systems. But even if you don't care about the no-torture feature, you can generate memorable passwords that use an entirely different type of memory.
Also, most people's passwords are a string that they easily remember + some numbers. It's much easier to remember blahblah123 than to look at the blobs every time you want to login and reconstruct "frherotspsmt..." from the images.
Perhaps this system could be used to help people remember forgotten passwords, like being able to select 5 of out 10 images in the correct order.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
though your post was meant to be humorous it also jibes with convention security wisdom for recalling strong passwords.
I forget who it was that said it, but a widely recomended strategy for strong passwords is to think of a shockingly graphic sexual phrase then use the first letters.
The vividness and the link to sexual activity makes it memorable (at least in males). And also its not likely to be a phase you would blurt out or something anyone cold easily guess about you. e.g. "take this job and shove it" would NOT be a good pass phrase because its something that might well be an expression you would use in your writings or speech.
Oh and by the way that's actually me in the batman costume doing your wife. or Ge
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If you know anything about the Rorshach test (the original inkblot test), you'll know its all about
statistical analyzing. The Rorshach inkblots were randomly chosen - it didn't matter at all what they looked like - as long as they were always the same.
After many decades of testing, psychiatrists were able to plot people on charts based on certain responses and then empirically decide whether someone might have a given mental illness based on whether their response should statistical similarity to others who had proven to have that illness. Most of the categories that the responses were judged on were extremely arbitrary.
The point is, the inkblot test relies on the fact that most people with "normal" brain function will look at an inkblot the same way. You'd be surprised at how many people who list "fly" as the one that looks like a "fly" etc. What you are going to end up with is only a handful of different words for each inkblot. People aren't going to pick phrases like "flying man with with green wings getting ready to lift-off" because those phrases are hard to remember. Most of them will be "fly" "flying man", "wing man" etc.
This is not a secure password.
You have to read The Art of Memory by Frances Yates. This book deals with ancient practice of memory training and using, including those fantastic Memory Palaces where you litterally build imaginary (or not) places in your mind and use them to store representations that remind you from one idea, word, sentence, concept, or anything. You can then "walk" from place to place, looking at those representations and re-building a speech for instance.
Actually, this is the "intellectual", generic version of the idea posted (and slashdotted) above, and you can use it to remember your passwords, long speeches, todo-list, anything.
And M$ won't be patenting this any time soon, the greeks used this even BC.
Worth a read and a try, really.
Note: Thomas Harris has had Hannibal Lecter use and play with memory palaces in his novels too.
theefer
(1) Mugatu, from Zoolander
(2) A gorilla in sweats doing a split
(3) Someone eating coffee grounds from a filter with chopsticks
(4) Feet of a reclining person
(5) Two ice cream cones
(6) A headless woman
(7) A frog in an apron (According to the article everyone thinks it's a flying person!)
(8) Snapping fingers
(9) Batman peeing
(10)Batman vomiting
I conclude that your a healthier person than I am...
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