Whether it’s down to convenience, laziness or other reasons, it’s something that crops up again and again and again. But Microsoft may have a solution to our stupidity: It has plans to create a dynamically updated list of moronic passwords that it won’t let you use.
In a blog post, Microsoft explains that it’s putting to use the insights it can glean from millions of leaked passwords in order to increase security. Rather than simply imposing rules about password length and complexity, it’s using publicly available information to create a list of commonly used passwords, which it simply won’t allow you to use.
If you’re relying on the likes of ’123456′, ‘password’ or ‘qwerty’ to protect your account, you’ll be told to “choose a password that’s harder for people to guess” (if you’re not, then you really should).The list will be continually updated based on new password leaks, so as people shift to using other dumb passwords, they’ll also be banned. Who knows, eventually we might all use strong passwords. Imagine!
These days, passwords are widely regarded as a broken form of security for our online lives. According to Weinert, password length requirements and regular password expiration (like when your office network compels you to frequently change your password) are all fallacies that actually make your password easier to crack. You won’t notice a lot of difference until you choose a dumb password, at which point you’ll be prompted to stop being a moron—sorry, to “choose a password that’s harder for people to guess.”
Farewell, “123456″, you were useful while you were allowed.
Techunzipped