Worm/Passwords

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <22624 at beta.lanl.gov> ttp at beta.lanl.gov (T T Phillips) writes:
-> And after you generate this random "pasword", no human user will be able
-> to remember it. And so your users will write the "passwords" down, paste
-> them on their terminals, ...etc.
-I don't know about other government installations installations,
-but here at Los Alamos, we are given what seem to be random
-passwords annually.  You must protect your password as you do
-your badge.  My observation is that the engineers, scientists,
-secretaries and managers seem to be able to cope with the random
-passwords without significant problems.

I don't know what your observations consist of.  Security specialists
would bet that most of those persons have written down the password
(also combinations, etc.) and that there is a significant chance that
it could be compromised undetectably.  I assume your badge has your
photo on it and other things that make it much harder to compromise
than a password.