Real Security?

An anonymous reader writes "A recent article at Ask Tog raised the common argument about how much security is good. Tog says: 'I've been watching security people for years as they've slowly increased the security of everything they can get their hands on until any idiot can wander in.' Is this the case? Are we increasing security too much, so that the users circumvent it? Should we be allowing simple passwords?"

Comments

THANKS FOR TELLING EVERYONE MY PASSWORD, ASSHOLE

[Anonymous Coward]

Re:Definitely

[G-funk]

Oh my god.... I have the exact same password on my luggage!

A Simple Exercise In Self-Auditing

[Bowie J. Poag]

Exercise: Make a drawing on paper of what your system looks like from the point of view of people on the outside. Draw it in a similar fashion to how one might draw a house, or a favorite car.

A) If your picture looks like or includes any of the following objects, proceed to step C:

. A block of swiss cheese
. A large question mark
. A fat mall-cop with powdered sugar around his mouth
. A small child in a corner, crying, holding a security blanket
. A Diebold voting terminal

B) If your picture looks like or includes any of the following objects, proceed to step C:

. Fort Knox
. A medieval castle under siege with the invaders having boiling tar poured on them.
. A resettable Viet-Cong boobytrap with dozens of pigs already skewered on it
. The business end of a .357 Magnum
. An illuminated Jesus standing atop an Sun E10K
. A solid, faceless slab of hyperdense radioactive metal extracted from the heart of a neutron star

C) You need to increase your system's security.

Re:Definitely

[red floyd]

Roland: One.
Dark Helmet: One.
Colonel Sandurz: One.
Roland: Two.
Dark Helmet: Two.
Colonel Sandurz: Two.
Roland: Three.
Dark Helmet: Three.
Colonel Sandurz: Three.
Roland: Four.
Dark Helmet: Four.
Colonel Sandurz: Four.
Roland: Five.
Dark Helmet: Five.
Colonel Sandurz: Five.
Dark Helmet: So the combination is one, two, three, four, five? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! The kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

My personal favorite

[DaveAtFraud]

P4ssw0rd!

You will note that it has all of the elements of a good password such as both upper and lower case letters, numerals as well as characters and punctuation. Its also easy to remember.

Re:Moore's Law vs. Evolution

[balloonhead]

But why is it that I occasionally have a mental blank and can't remember my PIN, having to turn tail and run after two failed attempts until the next day when I can try again, but when I am so blind drunk I can barely walk or speak, I can stagger two miles home, extract 10 pounds from my account (sometimes at two different terminals), get a kebab, navigate through two locked doors, urinate, undress, and get into (or near, sometimes) my bed?

And who can explain the last three ex-girlfriends' phone numbers that I remembered to call at 4am too? I sure as shit can't remember them during the day.

asterisk^8

[meowsqueak]

My password is easy to remember, it's just eight asterisks:

'********'

Sometimes I forget exactly how many, but I usually get it right the second time.

Re:Forced password changes

[pipingguy]

If you've done a dictionary search...

Slashdot is a great place to find alternative spelling that one can use as inspiration while thinking up passwords.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

You get a cavity.

Re:Two minds about it

[citog]

You must live in one of the areas with low internet penetration ... I've had the shit kicked out of me several times just for my /. password