Sometimes I can't remember my name, never mind my passwords.
For the past week, I haven't been able to log on to the netbabyworld games site for this very reason, which means I can't play Ninja Girl III or Boat Race Classic.
It's no easy task to choose a password that is easy to remember and secure at the same time. This is exacerbated by the fact we have multiple email accounts and register for numerous web sites, which makes for an awful lot of passwords to remember.
Many people succumb to the temptation to pick a simple word or phrase and use and reuse it. This makes for easy to remember but lousy passwords. My passwords use a combination of lower and upper case letters and numbers and are, I hope, pretty secure. But nIs3wOOd4 doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it?
But if, as the old adage goes, a picture says a thousand words help may be at hand.
Researchers at Microsoft have been working on new types of passwords that will be easier for people to remember but harder for hackers to crack.
Cryptography and anti-piracy specialist Darko Kirovski has demonstrated a prototype password system. On a screen full of images of different country flags, he clicked on a number of points within the images that corresponded to specific pixels. The pixels were then converted into a random number and stored in the computer.
Although any image can be used, the more complex the better. The idea is people remember images more easily than letters and numbers. Computer users will simply need to remember exactly where on the images they clicked and in what order to log on.
People won't have to use the names of family members, loved ones or pets to secure their information. Some people don't even manage this level of sophistication, which makes things even easier for would-be crackers, who can perform "dictionary attacks", using easily downloaded software from the internet that guesses words until it finds those used in passwords.
Most crackers find passwords using one of three techniques: Dictionary attacks, finding notes on which someone has written their password and "shoulder surfing".
The problem is shoulder surfing, watching someone type in their password, might be even easier when crackers only have to worry about what's happening on screen, not what someone's typing.
In the meantime, I'm more concerned about remembering my password for netbabyworld. Now where did I put that scrap of paper?
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