[109433] in Cypherpunks
Re: Simplicity
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mok-Kong Shen)
Wed Mar 24 03:26:32 1999
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 09:13:24 +0100
From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
To: Nicholas Cravotta <cravotta@compuserve.com>
CC: "David C. Oshel" <dcoshel@pobox.com>, cypherpunks@algebra.com,
aucrypto@suburbia.net
Reply-To: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
Nicholas Cravotta wrote:
>
> Sorry for the misunderstanding about cognometrics. Cognometrics refers only to passwords,
> not to encryption or keys. The idea is to create different kinds of passwords
> not based on alphanumeric characters. For example, one company uses faces
> to create a password. You select a combination of four faces from among
> several hundred choices. Supposedly you will remember faces easier than
> random alphanumeric characters. When it comes time to enter your password,
> the system will offer you nine faces from which you pick the first face, and so
> on for each of the four faces. By offering several hundred faces, the company proports that
> it will be harder to crack (4^100) than choosing from 10 digits. (This particular
> system is easy to break: you know that the correct face is one of the nine.
> Since the other eight are random, by failing several times, you can notice
> which single face appeared in every query for the first face, thus giving you
> the first face.)
>
> I thought the idea worth bringing up since many systems employ passwords as
> well as or in conjunction with keys. Passwords don't have to be conventional,
> and nonconventional passwords ("What's your favorite kind of beer?" -> "The kind
> in my refrigerator") can be difficult to crack because the answer domain is
> less defined.
In a discussion group sometime ago someone claimed that IBM has a very
generalpatent that covers the said face recognition system. Do you
happen to have information on that? Could you give the name of the
company employing that technique?
M. K. Shen
http://www.stud.uni-muenchen.de/~mok-kong.shen/ (Updated: 12 Mar 99)
