[Cryptography] Of writing down passwords

[Harald Koch]

On 21 September 2014 07:54, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

>
>   Choose a password that your[sic] can easily remember or write it down.
>

It should be obvious by now that everything we think we know about
passwords is wrong.

These days I teach this heresy - people should choose really strong,
hard-to-remember passwords, write them down, and stick them in their
wallets. (obviously this doesn't apply to credit card PINs.) This is
especially useful for rarely used passwords (like the WiFi router password).

As it turns out, we humans are much better at physical security, including
things like protecting our physical possessions, than we are at remembering
good passwords.

(Better, of course, is to use one of the software packages that remembers
your passwords for you... ;)

-- 
Harald (the heretic)
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