MetaFilter posts tagged with Password

Wikileaks cracks password on NATO Afghanistan document

Mwongozi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:14:18 -0800

Wikileaks cracks NATO's Master Narrative for Afghanistan
Wikileaks has cracked the encryption to a key document relating to the war in Afghanistan. The document, titled "NATO in Afghanistan: Master Narrative", details the "story" NATO representatives are to give to, and to avoid giving to, journalists. The encrypted document, which is dated October 6, and believed to be current, could be found on the Pentagon Central Command website "oneteam.centcom.mil", but that entire site is now down. The password was "progress".

Password Chart

blue_beetle — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 17:36:32 -0800

Password Chart - Generate strong passwords.

A clever little trick to protect your passwords.

weapons-grade pandemonium — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 10:57:11 -0800

How to log in from an internet café without worrying about keyloggers. (.pdf)

Stealing Osama's Identity

rzklkng — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:26:06 -0800

Security, the TSA, and the No-Fly List You would think that our National Security apparatus would be like the TV series "24", with the most ingenious and sophisticated technology available. You would be wrong. Disclaimer: TSA is not an ~~intelligent~~ intelligence agency. Here's a blurb from the resume of the designer(Kenneth Mack) of the application the airline industry uses for *PDF* managing their employee data and the cross-checking them with the no-fly list:

- Sr. Developer: Developed a program [for Goddard Technologies] that uses the "No-Fly List" Excel spreadsheet, provided by the FAA and the database of badged employees to permute the name combinations. It takes into consideration multiple first and middle names, with Soundex and the various "initial" combinations. This program reduced the time for comparison from 3 days to 10 minutes.

The scary yet interesting part of all of this is that the No-Fly List is nothing more than a password-protected spreadsheet (see this PDF). One would guess our Government's geeks would know that it's a bad idea to send email attachments containing social security numbers and dates of birth, unencrypted, over the internets, even if they might be terrorists.

$$$P0--ahgo6

delmoi — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 12:47:39 -0800

Write down your password. Bruce Schneier, Author of Applied Cryptography and founder of Counterpane security is urging people to write down their passwords.

Microsoft update disables user:password in URLs

johnnydark — Wed, 04 Feb 2004 12:55:16 -0800

With its latest security update Microsoft has disabled the ability to pass username:password pairs in URLs. If you usually use this format for connecting to your site via either FTP or HTTP, it will no longer work after you install this update.