Cryptosmith

It’s no surprise that someone managed to reset Sarah Palin’s password on a freebie e-mail account.  She’s a public figure and the answers to her so-called “security questions” are on the public record. It’s one thing to do personal and political e-mail on a Yahoo account but it’s DUMB to use such an account for government business when you have your very own support staff to keep that e-mail secure.

Large scale vendors like Yahoo and Google can’t help but do a bad job at authentication. This is why OpenID poses such promise - it lets us choose our authentication provider. Yes, some people will choose bad vendors. Careful people, however, get to choose safe ones. Continue Reading »

Posted under Information Security | No Comments »

There’s some terrific stuff here. Unfortunately, it’s packaged with Internet-based password selection.

Get it straight: you’re only supposed to share your passwords with yourself and your keyboard. You aren’t supposed to ask your astrologer for one, or collect one from someone on the bus, or at a cocktail party. And never, ever from an Internet web site.

read more

Posted under Information Security | No Comments »

Another chuckle:

Someone picked up the domain ‘highsecuritypasswordgenerator.com‘ and has proceeded to implement a password generator on it. The generator applies a common technique (I described it in my book Authentication) wherein you choose two words from long lists and separate them with a special character of some sort.

The down side should be obvious to anyone who thinks about web security: the password is shared with the password generating site and with anyone who sniffs the web page as it travels across the Internet. Continue Reading »

Posted under Information Security | No Comments »

Bruce Schneier pointed out this cartoon. I’ll be looking for this booth at the Minnesota State Fair next month.

read more | digg story

Posted under Information Security | No Comments »