Lost in this discussion of password strength is, "how do we handle multiple failed logins, forgotten passwords, and compromised passwords"? If your overall design (is this where we get into service design?) is put together correctly, a compromised password (or an attack on an account) isn't the end of the world.
I worked at a US federal gov't site where the root/admin passwords were printed out for the admins in a mutated form. They were then told an algorithm that would un-mutate the password into something usable. If the wrong password was used three times as root/admin on any system, the system was locked down and security was notified. The passwords were immediately rotated and new base/mutation pairs generated.
The goal was to give root/admin access to a large number of people without sharing passwords across systems, and it ended up working pretty well.
-- J. Eric "jet" Townsend, CMU Master of Tangible Interaction Design '09 design: www.allartburns.org; hacking: www.flatline.net; HF: KG6ZVQ PGP: 0xD0D8C2E8 AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5 F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
