Dilbert on passwords
Recent Dilbert comic strips have made fun of people who choose stupid passwords, through “Dogbert’s password recovery service for morons.” Yesterday’s strip, for example, had Dogbert recovering the pointy-haired boss’s password by simply asking him “Is it 123?” Today’s has him asking Ned his name followed by “Is your password Ned?” :)
The reason Dilbert is so funny is because it mirrors the real world so closely. That’s certainly the case here, with only the slightest bit of exaggeration. Recent studies, of MySpace in particular, have shown that people commonly choose passwords that are ridiculously easy to figure out simply by guessing (“123” wasn’t in the top 10, but “123456” was, along with “password”). Our book has a whole chapter devoted to choosing and maintaining good passwords, which is one of the easiest and most important things you can do to increase your Internet security. Of course Dilbert’s two sentences will get that point across to so many more people it’s not even funny (well, yeah, maybe it is).
On a directly related note, Wired magazine also has an article on much the same subject. The article (a bit longer and more serious than Dilbert’s) goes on to also talk about potential flaws in operating systems that can expose passwords, even good ones, to compromise. The article is certainly accurate in this respect, but such compromise is really very unlikely when it comes down to it. If you want to be sure, however, consider turning on “Secure virtual memory” in Mac OS X’s Security System Preference dialog to avoid even this minimal risk.
Thursday, January 18, 2007