Sep 27 2005
Know a good password manager?
Passwords seem to be in the news a lot recently; first it was someone at Microsoft saying we should right them down, then Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson discussing the same (along with half the geeks in North America) and now RSA has come out with this article on how much people hate their passwords.
So, we all know that passwords are a pain in the rear, but how are we going to replace them? Passwords are easy to implement, don’t require any additional hardware and are easy to replace. No other technology offers all those in one place. Biometrics is still going through growing pains (Remember the article on fooling fingerprint scanners with jello?). Digital Certificates work, but there’s a whole technical issue to get over with the average user and there’s no one standard. The different key fob technologies are all pretty expensive. And voice recognition just isn’t ready for prime time.
Even discounting the Unix servers that will still be around when my grandkids are old, I think passwords are here to stay. Unless you want to have that subdermal RFID implant placed in a fleshy part of your anatomy, that is.