Voluntary Disclosure Is the Threat to Password Security

And yet too many companies seem content to rely on password Puritanism as their response. Sometimes it's just silly -- for example, when some newspaper sites force readers to choose passwords with at least one number.

But more often, it's self-defeating. When users are pushed to remember too-obscure passwords, they'll start writing them down on Post-It notes stuck to a monitor or (worse yet) start reusing passwords among multiple high-value accounts. Worst of all is the policy of some companies and financial institutions to require users to change passwords every 30 or 90 days.

Not only do those periods still offer more than enough time for a minimally competent hacker to swipe an account login, the regular changing of passwords can easily soften up people for social engineering attacks.

Think of what happens every time a user must change a password -- or inevitably forgets the login of the month or the quarter: They'll have to go to a Web page or call up a help desk to get the password reset. That interaction represents a regularly scheduled opportunity for an attacker to try to step in and impersonate either party.

A few weeks ago, confronted by an obscure Web-mail login subject to one of these inane password-expiration rules, I called the support number listed on that site to have my password reset. (No, I won't name the firm involved). I expected to have the new login e-mailed to me -- but instead the helpful fellow on the other end of the line just read it to me over the phone, making no attempt to verify my identity.

If I'd been interested in stealing access to somebody else's account, I could have had a lot of fun. Instead, I could only wonder why we keep wasting our time with these illusory measures.

There are real problems with network security these days. But treating customers as if they were reprogrammable robots won't solve any of them.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.