61–70 of 91 posts
Quite the login method: 1) Tell me who you are, so I can load up your secret 30 character "password" from some database (the fact that this needs to be stored in a retrievable way makes this entire system insecure) 2) Here's one random sequence of 30 characters. Look at it for a little bit, ok now try to reproduce it from memory. 3) Repeat several times (not stated how many). 4) One of those attempts was your specifi…
"Threat model. The proposed system is designed to be used as a local password mechanism requiring physical presence. That is, we consider authentication at the entrance to a secure location where a guard can ensure that a real person is taking the test without the aid of any electronics"
Many of the comments I see here tend to assume that this is directly applicable to protecting a remote system such as logging in to a website. Perhaps with adaption this could be a useful technique for authenticating into a website, but as far as I know no authentication scheme can protect against an intruder with a gun to your head forcing you to log in. Instead, the use case here is to prevent someone who has stolen your ID badge and forced you to give up your PIN from being able to get access to the top-secret bunker.
No. Of course not. What this system provides is a unique -extra- method of authentication. I really doubt this is meant for putting this on your laptop in place of a password scheme. But you might use something like it as part of multi-factor authentication, e.g. into a secure facility. Remember all those movies where somebody's eyeballs are removed/replaced/copied in order to fool a retina scanner? I can't comment on how plausible that is, but I can certainly tell that if it were this system, they could not have broken it, period. I think that's pretty useful don't you?
The good thing about memorizing passwords this way is that it doesn't matter how random the password is - totally random letters, numbers and symbols or a sentence are the same when it's a keyboard dance.
As long as you have a keyboard anyway...
I have to find a keyboard to figure out half of my passwords when setting up my phone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't even need to be drinking, but sometimes I'll fat finger it a few times and get frustrated. The only way I can get logged in is to type really really fast.
Yeah, I find speed is important too. The quicker you can type it, the easier it is to recall. Another thing, if I slow down I notice i'm sort of humming parts of the pattern in my head, as if each character held a sort of audible weight that indicates where my fingers should go next... again, kind of like playing an instrument. Yet I can't play anything. Weird.
This is basically the same method I use for laptop hard disk encryption. I don't remember the password, but I typed it so many times my fingers remember exactly the pattern to type. Kind of like playing a piano. Several times i've been drinking and am unable to remember how to log into my machine, because I can't replicate the pattern and don't remember the password. After 15 minutes of concentration it comes back.