Passwords

Some things are worth keeping secret.  At least, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and a number of other our nation’s founding fathers thought so, as they used cryptography to send secret messages to one another.  In Colonial days, you couldn’t zap an encrypted message through Medusa of Ethernet of cables, but you could send a cryptogram through the Pony Express.  If you were really clever, you might even sew Morse code into the fabric of your messenger, just in case they were detained, interrogated or had their pockets searched.  It was also good to keep secret Harriett Tubman’s Underground Railroad, which was nothing like ride on the Tram from Disney’s Contemporary Resort to the entrance of the Magic Kingdom but much more like the Oregon Trail, without the caravans or oxen – but probably with the dysentery.  In any case, secrets are not inherently bad, and indeed some things should be kept secret.  Children don’t need a key to their parents’ bedroom, your neighbor doesn’t need your bank account information (unless he’s your CPA), and very few people need your password.  However, if your password is ‘password’ or contains ‘1234’ in that order or is your birthday or is the name of one of your family members then it can be easily cracked, even without brute force attacks, which can crack virtually any eight character or less password in a matter of seconds.  Thankfully, higher caliber companies use software that encrypts your password so that you actually have to reset if you’ve forgotten it.  Your password is your sentinel – the last line of defense – to enter into your treasure trove-laden castle (I didn’t say your vaults were full, though they may be).  Even though Google and several other big players are working on biometric identification for devices, potentially making conventional passwords obsolete, many forerunners in the field believe traditional passwords will still be a key player for a decade or more.  Some passwords, like codes a literal large banking vault, use algorithms that automatically reset the password every few minutes – for example, the next ten digits in the infinite series of ‘Pi’ (3.14159265…).  If you know the password, the contents could be yours.  If someone knows your password, your ‘contents’, or secrets, could be theirs.  Of course, most of us give away those kinds of things anyway.  There is software that can decrypt the geo-location data on your Facebook and Instagram posts (ie, they can know where you are).  But sometimes, it’s easier to just social engineer someone’s password…so, can I have your password?