Password Story

Password Story

After the 9/11 crisis, Microsoft faced an issue. To retrieve the passwords of people who died. It looks trivial and yes, inhumane too in front of the tragedy that had just occurred. Regardless, it was a serious problem. A lot of people were privy to information only known to them and their computer/mailbox. In the absence of the password it would all have been lost.

The brute force technique would have solved it eventually but would have taken a lot of time. To give an example let's assume that password is to be of 5 characters and all of them letters. The machine will start with applying aaaaa as a password and will try all combinations till zzzzz until the password is retrieved. That's 26^5 combinations. And in the real word the passwords are more than 5 letters , the length is also not fixed and special characters and uppercase letters are also involved. It is clearly a tough, very tough task.

So they have to look at the person's life for inputs. For e.g. , was he married? If yes, than could his marriage anniversary be a password. How did they combine this information with brute force exactly, I can only imagine. And this blog is definitely not going to cover that.

What I was interested in is how that little password; that is there only for security reasons; that has no impact or belonging to our life; could carry so much of "us" in it. Based on our need to remember it we award to it a print of our personality.

Of course it's not the same for everyone. The" security-ease of remembering" trade off creates a fascinating scene. The absolute pro-security ones will make up an absolute random password like 12sfgdv$%k and commit it to memory. The one that favours ease of remembrance will opt for birthday dates, wedding dates etc. It's the one in middle that fascinates me. Those who would like their password to be secure enough to be random to others but personal enough for them to remember. In the process of doing so they provide to it an imprint of their personality. The imprint could be well thought off or could be more subconscious.

There is this absolutely moving story of how a mother found out about his son's homosexuality only after his death. His password was" lambda1969". Lambda is the Greek word "I" sometimes referring to the gay liberation. The year 1969 referring to the year of stonewall riots.

My passwords were never this profound but now that I look at them closely they do reveal some things about me. Initially my passwords were names of famous English movies like "matrix" , "killbill" etc. I grew up in a small town where English was, and I dare say;  is, something that commands respect. The fact that I can understand English movies gave me something of a status. Also that they were much better than hindi movies, is a statement not many would argue on. So basically it was something that I liked and gave me a bit of status. No wonder they became my initial passwords.

My password up next, "confuse" or some variation of it pretty much defines my after school years. I had one focus in the later part of my school life; To get into an IIT. Once I was there I was not really sure if that was what I wanted to do . I felt like coming back but then I was not sure if I wanted to come back either. It is the confusion of choosing what to do that just stayed with me and crept its way to my password. In between there was time of homesickness where my password became my hometown itself. "Banswara". There was also a time; that I remember now with a fair amount of cringe, when a conversation with my Ex tested my patience to a hilt resulting in the password "fuckyouall". The fact that my password today is a far more positive word tells me that I probably came out of it all Okay (Fingers crossed)

So here is what I would want you guys to do. Think of your old or new passwords and think of the way it captures you and I would love to hear your story. I think it's a fascinating read into somebody (and I do know this is borderline voyeurism but I am what I am) and also I think it would be nice to create a story about it.

I really don’t know what I am looking for and probably it's too much to ask for anyway.

But I do believe there is a compelling urge in everyone to make their stories heard just like there is a compelling urge in me to hear those stories. Here is the link for you to send me the stories anonymously. There is an option of sharing your details too but needless to say they would be purely confidential.

Your password story . I must admit my reach to social media is fairly limited so do help me spread it around. If you know of someone who would be interested in sharing his password story , feel free to forward the link around.