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Passwords Re-examined

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Old 07-14-2009
Passwords Re-examined
Bruce Schneier of course does it better justice than I ever could, but there was a great paper released that looks at passwords through a modern lens:  Do Strong Web Passwords Accomplish Anything?  Today's attack vectors are different--phishing is preferred over brute-force attacks, etc.  Much like how Mr. Schneier likes to remind us that if you put up a strong front door using strong cryptography, attackers will just find a way around the door.  They seek the path of least resistance.  I was very encouraged to read the linked paper,  so I wanted to pass it along who might not have caught it on slashdot.org.  I think the use of passwords needs serious re-examination as far as what is trying to be accomplished, and this paper fuels a much-needed discussion.

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LEARN ABOUT OPENSOLARIS

paperconf

PAPERCONF(1)						      General Commands Manual						      PAPERCONF(1)

NAME

       paperconf - print paper configuration information

SYNOPSIS

       paperconf [ [ -p ] paper | -d | -a ] [ -z ] [ -n | -N ] [ -s | -w | -h ] [ -c | -m | -i ]

DESCRIPTION

       paperconf prints information about a given paper.  The information that can be obtained is the name of the paper, its size and its width or
       height.	When called without arguments, paperconf prints the name of the system- or user-specified paper, obtained by looking in  order	at
       the  PAPERSIZE  environment  variable,  at  the	contents  of  the file specified by the PAPERCONF environment variable, at the contents of
       /etc/papersize or by using letter as a fall-back value if none of the other alternatives are successful.  By default, width and	height	of
       the paper are printed in PostScript points.

OPTIONS

       -p paper
	      Specify the name of the paper about which information is asked.

       -d     Use the default builtin paper name.

       -a     Consider all known paper names.

       -z     If the paper name is unknown, print it but issue a message on the standard error and exit with a non-zero code.

       -n     Print the name of the paper.

       -N     Print the name of the paper with the first letter capitalized.

       -s     Print the size (width followed by height) of the paper.

       -w     Print the width of the paper.

       -h     Print the height of the paper.

       -c     Use centimetres as unit for paper size.

       -m     Use millimetres as unit for paper size.

       -i     Use inches as unit for paper size.

ENVIRONMENT

       PAPERSIZE	   Paper size to use regardless of what the papersize file contains.

       PAPERCONF	   Full path to a file containing the paper size to use.

FILES

       /etc/papersize	   Contains  the  name	of  the system-wide default paper size to be used if the PAPERSIZE and PAPERCONF variables are not
			   set.

AUTHOR

       Yves Arrouye <arrouye@debian.org>

SEE ALSO

       papersize(5)

								   24 April 2001						      PAPERCONF(1)