The Wall Street Journal | By: Robert McMillan | August 07, 2017:
Bill Burr’s 2003 report recommended using numbers, obscure characters and capital letters and updating regularly — he regrets the error.
The man who wrote the book on password management has a confession to make: He blew it.
Back in 2003, as a midlevel manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Bill Burr was the author of “NIST Special Publication 800-63. Appendix A.” The 8-page primer advised people to protect their accounts by inventing awkward new words rife with obscure characters, capital letters and numbers—and to change them regularly.
The document became a sort of Hammurabi Code of passwords, the go-to guide for federal agencies, universities and large companies looking for a set of password-setting rules to follow.
The problem is the advice ended up largely incorrect, Mr. Burr says. Change your password every 90 days? Most people make minor changes that are easy to guess, he laments. Changing Pa55word!1 to Pa55word!2 doesn’t keep the hackers at bay.
Also off the mark: demanding a letter, number, uppercase letter and special character such as an exclamation point or question mark—a finger-twisting requirement.
“Much of what I did I now regret,” said Mr. Burr, 72 years old, who is now retired.
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