Stupid Password Requirements

The most stupid password requirement I met this year.
I’m sorry I can’t recall the site it came from.

Minimum 8 characters
Maximum 32 characters
At least 1 Lowercase letter (a-z)
At least 1 Uppercase letter (A-Z)
At least 1 Number (0-9)

Now then what should a password be made off?

If you search the internet for that, you come across many different statements. But as far as I know, there is only oen good rule. Make you password as long as possible, then it’s harder to do a brute force attack on it.

There are people saying things like

Make up a sentence you can easily remember, take the first letter of every word in the sentence, and include apunctuation or turn numbers into digits for variety. Then ‘I have two kids: Jack and Jill.’  would become Ih2k:JaJ

Queen Sylvanas, would turn in here grave if she wasn’t undead already. You’re better off using the sentence then the ‘shortened’ version. If it comes to attacking your account (not by social engineering that’s a whole other story)  which one would be the first to be found? the shortest one of course.

There for as a programmer or architect you should seriously reconsider if you have limits like your password can only be 32 characters long. At least 256! People should be able to wirte a book as password. A book they remember, they know by hearth.

As a user of a website or service you should complain if you get stupid password requirements! Ask for the possibility of something long with any character you like. Not with obligatory weird character and punctuation marks, they are just fooling you that you are more secure with a password of 8 chars and a number…

There is no line

Sometimes it’s time to think of other things then code! Compiling mixtapes instead of code …

For the Acid – Techno – House – Funky Fans

There is no line by Redlab on Mixcloud

Everything is an algorithm

Everything is an algorithm or Geek Powerpoints from TV

The best stuff from the last Stargate Serie (that being Stargate Universe) not the best, a ship ‘lost’ in space. A science fiction scenario that comes back once every X years (Star Trek Voyager, Battlestar Galactica, … probably more ..)
itsallinthealgorithm

Even the great Dr McKay knew it. See his first slide in a presentation in Stargate Universe ‘S02 E15’. We never saw the rest of the slides though 🙁 wondering what they would have been.

But talking about algorithms, it is true. You find them everywhere. Our whole universe and life consists of patterns and algorithms.

some interesting books & talks about that:
Ron Eglash on fractals (TEDx)
everything is math (book)

Could keep on going, but you must find your own path.