Ron K. Jeffries wrote: > >> A lot of my usage involves mobile devices. Not clear if you plan to > address that need.
If they have a USB host port to attach a keyboard (or equivalent), things would be the same as for any other PC. If they don't, then you'd have to fall back to traditional passwords or simple challenge-response schemes. It would be nice to have Bluetooth, to be able to talk to mobile devices that don't have a USB host port, but as far as I know, BT is still troubled territory when it comes to chip and documentation availability. > Password safe with keyboard and display. The keyboard seems to be on its way out. Maybe for version 2.0 :-) It would have been small anyway, OQO 01 grade. > Passphrase required to open safe, plus challenge response. Well, with a simple input scheme, it would be a PIN, or a set of PINs (e.g., one to "open" the device at all, and another one to get to the juicier bits, like ATM codes.) That PIN could be the result of a weak challenge, but maybe it's not worth the bother. In any case, since one can change the firmware, there's plenty of opportunity to experiment with authentication and user interaction schemes. Speaking of which, the "official" firmware should of course be signed. But one could add other signatories and/or just accept unsigned firmware. > In a dream world, some form of biometric authentication. Most of the easily available biometric authentication seems to be more a gadget than a serious defense. I wouldn't bother with it. If the government tells you they need it to fight evil and it's infallible, probably neither is true :-) > The goal is to store passwords, and display password when needed. Period. > In other words, it remembers passwords I do not have memorized. It can do that. Plus "type" them to the PC, so that you can pick nasty passphrases, or even go to challenge-response (if the software on the PC plays along with it). The problem with ordinary passwords is that we're approaching the point where it's easier for machines to brute-force them than for humans to remember. A bit like some of those captchas. So it's nice to have some room for making things a bit harder for those who wish us ill. > Making the device tiny is not on my wish list, since I'd expect a decent > display e-ink? E-paper still seems to be too hard to source for this sort of project. What you want are heavily commoditized components that are used in millions of products. That doesn't only keep the price down but it also decreases the risk of getting stuck with just a single source. > and a keyboard large enough for human fingers, and with enough keys that at > a minimum numerals get a dedicated row. If you make it too big people will not want to carry it around with them. I think the 3 x 8 cm form factor should be a good compromise. You still get a display that's almost 15 mm tall, so you can have two lines of illuminated letters of some 6-7 mm, maybe 6-7 such letters per line. Or have some monster font of 15 mm that they could even read from the ISS, but then lateral scrolling may get a bit excessive :) You can make an experiment: take your favourite drawing program and draw letters of varying size, from 10 to 20 pt (3.5 - 7 mm), in a bold sans-serif font on a black background. Make the letters a little grey to simulate the difference in contrast between paper and displays. Then print this and see down to what size you can still read it in a room with dimmed lights. > A capability for the password safe to construct passwords would be useful. I'd definitely want that, yes. > If that was included, > needs to allow setting rules to affect the pattern so as to improve ease of > typing or human memory. It's also needed to match what the other end accepts. I'd want the ability to generate password that are never even shown to the user. You can't blab what you don't know. > But think about an aging population, where a way to remember > decent if not NSA-quality passwords would be VERY useful. None of us are getting younger ;-) I've learned to hate dimly lit restaurants where the menu is printed in a gracile 6 point font on stylishly colored paper ... - Werner _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
