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."

Comments

I liked faced passwords better

[HiKarma]

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.