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Showing posts from November, 2013

Password Woes

Happy belated International Change-Your-Password Week! Earlier this month, thanks to the generous sponsorship by the great folks at Adobe , people all around the world were changing their passwords and tech blogs were parroting guidelines for choosing a strong password. But let’s be honest – passwords are a hassle. And, as Adobe was so kind to remind us, even the strongest unique password can be an open door if the company storing it isn’t doing so competently. As someone who is a programmer, I’m aware of several technical solutions to our password woes. As someone who suffers from cynical realism, I believe the barrier to adopting these solutions to be red-tape and human nature (ego and laziness). There’s no reason for every website to require their own login credentials when OpenID and OAuth exist. Perhaps we should increase liability for password storers and provide incentives to the crackers who hack them. A smart company would migrate to an SSO-provider to mitigate their responsi