Passwords - Design Errors And Operational Issues

A frequent source of severe design errors can be fast built systems, developed by unskilled people:

-Identification for example by your “mother’s maiden name”, which is easy for the thief to find out from birth or marriage records
-The sheer number of applications for which the average person is asked to use a password exceeds the powers of human memory
-This often results in using the same passwords for different purposes

Example for a design error:
A Bad Mnemonic System for Saving Pins

Example for operational issues:
-Using same passwords and circumstances for test environments and real environments, which can cause severe security problems, if both are accessable. (cmp. to the Prestel incident in Britain)

-Failing to reset the default passwords supplied with products or services is always a source of security lacks

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