Windows 8 Mixes Personal Pictures And Custom Gestures For Log In Passwords



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How many people turn off the windows login password.  I do, I just want my pc to boot right to the desktop.  I guess it might make sense for a tablet, which looks to be what MS is gearing Win 8 for.  Otherwise, no if I did decide to do Windows 8 on my laptop, I would not use this "feature".



Funny that I know the girl on the right of the picture!



LOL! You must be kidding!



It's probably easier to guess the combinations here compared to a regular password, and besides, this works best on a touchscreen and most people don't have one.



Most people will probably just draw a line down or something and be done with it. It'll be the touch equivalent of "12345"



Would love to hear the over-the-phone conversation of someone telling the other party how to unlock their computer:

1) Tap Cathy's nose

2) Draw circle around Bob's head

3) Point to Cindy's nose and drag it to Nancy's nose.





Picking 4 words, in English, and spelling them all with only lowercase alphabet characters, would be more secure than the majority of all passwords used by the 'average Joe' today. This gesture-based technology is, for one, far too easy to see and memorize.

Also, the smudges are still a valid issue, because it honestly doesn't take too long to guess where it starts and what direction it goes in. At the very least, it'd be much easier for a computer to brute force than an 18-char lower-alpha password, because a dictionary has thousands/millions of words, and there are only 3 gestures that are already vaguely known.

And, of course, this suffers from the same ambiguity of the password as conventional combination locks. Even though, in theory, the combinations of numbers on the lock are many, the combinations that actually need tobe tried are far less, because of the error margin allowed (you could be off by about 3 on any of the 3 numbers, which reduces search space by a lot). The same applies to gestures.

I think it'll be a lot easier for people to just figure out that memorizing a sentence of 6 words will provide a strong enough password that the burden of security lies on the technology as opposed to the password used.

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