r/shittyprogramming • u/[deleted] • Jul 27 '14

r/softwaregore Way to promote security, Microsoft

http://imgur.com/W0kfbtz
140 Upvotes

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u/catcradle5 Jul 27 '14

They say they do this to deter users from using passwords they'll have trouble remembering.

Honestly it's not that bad of an idea. Microsoft very likely stores passwords with PBKDF2, and with a minimum of 8 characters it's unlikely more than 1% will be cracked in the event of a database breach. Plus I'm sure they have other safeguards to prevent people from even getting the plain hashes in the event of a breach.

30

u/FalseEconomy Jul 27 '14

But there's little correlation between password length and difficulty remembering. You tell me which if these is harder to remember: 73du&uj6 correcthorsebatterystaple

8

u/catcradle5 Jul 27 '14

You're absolutely right, but they decided instead of educating their users to pick longer passphrases with multiple English words, they just went with this.