“Well, it’s intuitively obvious what that is.”
Microsoft Turns To Inkblots For Password Generation
Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) thinks the fact that no two people look at an inkblot the same way can be used to help generate more secure computer passwords.The company has set up a Web site that shows users a series of Rorschach-style inkblots — of the sort used in psychological profiling — and then asks them to write down the first and last letters of each word they associate with the pictures.
Ultimately, the users are asked to combine the letters into a password.
Microsoft hopes the approach will help overcome a major flaw inherent in systems that ask users to make up their own passwords: those that are difficult to crack are hard to remember, and those that are easy to remember are also easy for hackers to guess. “A century of psychological literature indicates that inkblot associations are intimately personal, and our own user studies verify that users almost always describe the same inkblots quite differently,” Microsoft researchers note on the project’s Web site — inkblotpassword.com.
You know, I was skeptial at first but this really has me impressed, it could work. I still see biometric devices as the mainstream future, i.e. fingerprint scanners all the way- but this is cheap, pretty easy and surprisingly effective, I am reserving true judgement however until a week from now when I try to remember my word associations.
The site isn’t working optimally for me–the images of the inkblots are overlapping each other! And what’s the deal with the stupid “pick the kittens” minigame? Some of us just want to get to the blots!
It doesn’t work too well for me–all I see is butterflies, so I keep typing “by” over and over.
I don’t understand why we have to play the stupid pick-the-kitties captcha game. Why would I need to fill in a captcha to do this?
But do people see the same thing the next time they see the inkblots?
It reminds me of WORMS 3D.
It’s just missing 6 members of Red Team and 6 members of Green Team.
Bazooka! Banana Bomb! Shotgun :::
I see the Chiquita Banana lady.
How often are passwords hacked the hard way with math?
I would guess that the vast majority of systems are hacked either by guessing STUPIDLY SIMPLE user passwords or exploiting some hole in the software.
It’s that “almost always” that worries me.
Many security ideas sound good until you get about 10 accounts going, at various places. Now you have 10 inkblots and they all start to sort of look alike – the assocations bleed across…
That is total and utter bullshit. There are many ways to come up with a password that you can remember but is difficult to guess. One is to take the first letter of each word in the line of a song. There are many more.
Good to hear M$ solved all those Vista problems, and can move on to the real issues.
#11
And Apple will use abstract paintings instead of inkblots and make individuals believe that using shitty art as password is cooler than nerdish inkblots.
I would have thought combinations of “V” & “a” would be too obvious.
RBG
Two bats working together to make a shadow puppet bat.
It will never work. #7 recognized my password!
Try Steve Gibson’s password page here:
https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
And his one-time Perfect Paper Password podcast is here:
http://media.grc.com/sn/SN-117.mp3
Looks to me like two poodle heads hovering above a fountian, that has dirty water. How do you turn that into a password?