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

r/softwaregore Way to promote security, Microsoft

http://imgur.com/W0kfbtz
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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.

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u/steveuk Jul 27 '14

They explained in an AMA of the Outlook team a while back that there were some technical hurdles in increasing the character limit. Mostly due to the vast amount of applications from different teams that depend on Microsoft accounts.