July 26, 2013

Why are you talking like that's easy?

Everything that makes a password strong is what makes it difficult or impossible to remember, and if you're over 50-60 years old, and you have accounts on eighty different sites, you're going to have to come up with a system or have weak passwords and/or nine or ten passwords for the whole group.

Maybe computer geeks find memorizing random symbols an easy thing, if so, that's only because they spend what is or becomes their "work hours" at it. People who have other professions are using computer devices because those purportedly make things easier. If those professional people are supposed to memorize page after page of random keyboard symbols, they wouldn't be using computers very much and a lot of computer geeks would be out of their jobs.

Maybe you trained yourself for those memory feats in high school or college, but the rest of us don't have time doing anything like it. You'd better hope you never get a concussion or have electro-convulsive therapy, because that ability is very actually fragile.

My opinion is if passwords are that much of a hassle, computer geeks better stop being arrogant SOB's about it and start trying to make it easier.

I have a system for managing passwords. It's not conventional, but they're all strong, and I don't have them memorized.

And I'll just add: websites and companies should practice due diligence about this, too. For one thing, I don't know why anybody should get away with brute force password cracking. If websites would limit the number of times per minute log ins can be attempted to something closer to the speed a human being could type it, that would neutralize brute force attacks. I know it presents its own attack issue (you can close a user out of an account by sending attempts), so it's not that simple, but I'm sure there are solutions. They should be thinking along those lines.

July 5, 2013

If there were any doubt

. . . it's now confirmed that the US was behind this crap.

I remember just last Friday President Obama stating how Snowden was so yesterday, that he had too many important things to attend to be concerned about an issue plain-old law enforcement could take care of. Yes, law enforcement, like the US State Department, at the ambassador level.

As good as our government was at kicking itself in the nuts, I really wonder who planted the disinformation that Snowden was on the Bolivian president's jet? We will probably never find out, but I know Putin is probably laughing hardest.

It's probably one the the best practical jokes in the history of international intrigue. I don't think it's going to be the last one on us before this is over. The rest of the world is going to have a knee-slapping time making the great empire look like a bunch of buffoons over this.

And the US now deserves no less.