Worm/Passwords

[a.v.reed]

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.

Not knowing the details, I would assume that a mnemonic heuristic,
similar to that used by AT&T Mail, is also used to generate the
"random" passwords distributed in Lost Alamos.

If, on the other hand, these "passwords" really ARE just random
sequences of printable ASCII, then kremvax!root probably hopes
you really believe that last sentence of yours. And I have a
beautiful bridge I might let you invest in....

				Adam Reed (avr at mtgzz.ATT.COM)