2014/07/27

Password On Media #9

Below are some of the latest media articles about password problems and my comments on them.

- Russian Gang Amasses Over a Billion Internet Passwords
“A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.”

My comment:  We do not have to panic. It will be possible to put such situations under control. 

The Expanded Password System that we advocate handles a “character” as an “image”.  Each character/image is identified by the image identifier data which can be any long.  Assume that your password is easy-to-remember but easy-to-crack, for instance, “ABC123” and that those characters are identified as X4s&, eI0w, and so on by the randomizing program.  When you input ABC123, the authentication data that the server receives is not “ABC123”, but something like “X4s&eIwdoex7RVb%9Ub3mJvk”, which may automatically change periodically or at each access.  When such very-high-entropy data are hashed, it would be next to impossible to quickly crack the hashed data back to the original password.  Give different sets of identifier data to “ABC123” and the different servers will receive all different very-high-entropy authentication data. 

Brute force attacks and rainbow-table attacks are effective for low-entropy data, not for very-high-entropy data.  Even if the hashed passwords were stolen, we could stay calm when we know that criminals would have to give up.  There exists such a sweeping solution.  We do not have to panic.

The Expanded Password System, which enables us to make use of autobiographic image memory that is the least subject to the cognitive phenomenon named “interference of memory”, also helps enhance the precious text passwords that we have somehow memorized.

Incidentally, password managers may help for low-security services but should not be recommended for high-security services because of the single point of failure they necessarily involve.  Biometric solutions are not an alternative to the password so long as they rely on a password for self-rescue against false rejection while retaining the near-zero false acceptance in the real world.  Multi-factor solutions are an expanded use of the passwords, not an alternative to the password, when one of the factors is the password.  The alternative to text passwords should and can be found from among what we remember.


- How to Solve the Password Problem: Teach Kids When They're Young

My comment:  We cannot remember more than 5 text passwords on average, not because we are silly, lazy or uneducated, but because our memory of text passwords get too heavily influenced by the “interference of memory”  We cannot run as fast as horses, not because we are silly, lazy or uneducated.


- Poor password management leaves service accounts open to attack
“The latest study has revealed that professionals don’t practice what they preach when it comes to passwords”

My comment:  What I have long suspected is now confirmed.


- Password manager remembers all your passwords

My comment:  Password manager remember all my passwords and loses all my passwords to criminals as soon as hacked.


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About Me

About Expanded Password System "Mnemonic Guard"
http://mneme.blog.eonet.jp/default/files/outline_of_mnemonic_security.pdf

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