Password expert says he was wrong: Numbers, capital letters and symbols are useless By Ashley May
USA TODAY Cybersecurity experts say certain password rules are ineffective. Here is some of the latest advice on setting and resetting them. Time The man who said use capital letters, special characters and numbers in your password is now taking back that advice. (Photo: hanieriani, Getty Images/iStockphoto) The man behind the 2003 report responsible for many current password guidelines says the advice is wrong. Bill Burr, the author of an 8-page publication released by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told The Wall Street Journal his previous advice of creating passwords with special characters, mixed-case letters and numbers won't deter hackers. In fact, he told the journal,'the paper wasn't based on any real-world password data, but rather a paper written in the 1980s. 'Much of what I did I now regret,' Burr told The Wall Street Journal . The problem is that federal agencies, businesses and institutions took the paper seriously'very seriously. The report turned into password protocol. Today, even though Burr's report was updated in June, we are still prompted to change our password every 90 days using at least one capital letter, symbol and number. These combinations aren't secure,'mainly because people choose predictable combinations. The advice about frequently changing a password has been criticized since the report. A 2010 study by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that updating passwords often can actually help hackers identify a pattern. Another study from Carleton University said frequent changes are more inconvenient than helpful. The better solution could be to simply use a password with four random words, because the number of letters can be more difficult to hack than a small combination of letters and special characters, the Journal reports. Finally, a good reason to ignore those password prompts and come up with one we can actually remember. Follow Ashley May on Twitter: @AshleyMayTweets Original Article at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/09/password-expert-sa ys-he-wrong-numbers-capital-letters-and-symbols-useless/552013001/ -- The following information is important for all members of the Mac Visionaries list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your Mac Visionaries list moderator is Mark Taylor. You can reach mark at: macvisionaries+modera...@googlegroups.com and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/macvisionaries@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
