I have had trouble convincing people before, would you happen to have a link ?
They refer to it as a “Memorized Secret“.
The appendix, “Strength of Memorized Secrets” is informative rather than a guideline, but I would recommend quoting it too in such discussions:
> composition rules, which require the user to choose passwords constructed using a mix of character types, such as at least one digit, uppercase letter, and symbol. However, analyses of breached password databases reveal that the benefit of such rules is not nearly as significant as initially thought… although the impact on usability and memorability is severe
There’s also this great quote:
Verifiers SHOULD NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types or prohibiting consecutively repeated characters) for memorized secrets. Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically).
There’s other great stuff in there as well like that you should allow users to “paste” passwords and potential passwords should be checked against a list of known bad ones.
Even the head of information security tried changing this and failed to get the change through.
Why can I accept it? I constantly see colleagues sharing passwords and constantly have to say "please don't" when they try to share their password with me. While forcing people to change their passwords doesn't eliminate the underlying problem, it does limit the scope of the damage.
For the next 10 years, his password was a particular insulting phrase directed at the IT guys, followed by a number that would increment each time he had to change it. Got into the hundreds before he left the company.
It also interferes with password managers and secure keys. Opens a phishing vector. Generally I could enumerate how bad it is and run out of ink here. (And it's a screen.)
Of course there's TouchID and Windows hello but they don't work if your laptop is closed in a dock. Or in my case a Mac mini at home.
This is why I still stick to the truly random sorry password, I have no issues remembering arbitrary strings for some reason :)
Luckily my work still allows 10-char with specials or passphrases of 16 and longer without. And don't forget passphrases only benefit in very specific situations such as hash brute forcing. Online attacks already block after a handful of attempts.
Also, the incessant screen locking really annoys me, every time I step away for a coffee my PC is locked again, and this is also at home where my environment is completely secure and I'm the only one living there. I actually work in security but sometimes there is just no reason and it becomes just a barrier.
In the past I used an app to jiggle the mouse every once in a while but that doesn't work anymore. I now made a digispark that does the same in hardware. :) I only use it at home though and it auto-locks my desktop when I leave the house (all my personal ones do too)
If they'd just allow us to use our yubikey + pin it would be so much easier and more secure...
Those are rookie numbers!
In all serious, my point is roughly that typing Sp3c1al_(h4racTer_p@ssw0rd$ is like O(n) whereas typing passphrases is like O(log n). Once you hit a certain length, pass phrases start pulling ahead in ease-of-use.
We're already constantly maintaining muscle memory just by typing normal words every day. With muscle memory for special character passwords, you have to start over from scratch every time you have to change one.
In other words, imagine I flipped over a flashcard with a new passphrase on it consisting of lowercase English words, and asked you to type it. Now imagine I flip over a flashcard with a new, special character password. How many more times do you think you'd have to reference the flashcard with the special character password while typing it out and developing the muscle memory over the flashcard with the passphrase?
> Verifiers SHOULD NOT impose other composition rules (e.g., requiring mixtures of different character types or prohibiting consecutively repeated characters) for memorized secrets. Verifiers SHOULD NOT require memorized secrets to be changed arbitrarily (e.g., periodically). However, verifiers SHALL force a change if there is evidence of compromise of the authenticator.