Hacker News Reader

Having worked for the MoD in the past, shit like this gets punished big time. They have quite stringent rules for managing credentials.

Whoever printed that out will probably be fired pretty much straight away.

Unless it was Prince William of course...

This is unfortunately true. He could shoot a child in the face and get a pardon...

Reminds me of http://xkcd.com/936/

It says in the article that the password was obvious and easy to guess so I doubt this is the reason.

What if your netadmin makes you change it every three weeks?

Edit: Whoever downvoted me obviously undermines how quickly 'password lag' builds up if you're made to change your passwords often and forced to not use the last 3 or 5 passwords again.

Particularly for sites you only log into every few months. One time passwords, with a 6 week lag between use require a password manager. Memory will not cut it.

And if you are nontechnical that means paper. I consulted a decade ago with a team that had ~5 systems like this. The office was awash in sticky notes. Sometimes security policies are a menace to actual security.