[nukkad] Perils of password protection

[Harshal Chhaya <>]

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All of us are secretive about our passwords and PINs 
and rightly so. However, this can cause major problems 
in real life scenarios. A few weeks back I had posted
a message about how Mali's presidential election was
jeopardised. The reason? The technician with access to 
the election center's computers had an accident. (see:
http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/may2002/msg00137.html)

Today there is news about a Norwegian museum that can't
access a data bank because the person who setup the system
has died. The data bank contains hundreds of historical 
documents. The director of the museum appealed on nationwide
radio for computer experts to help the museum break the
password and retrieve the documents. The overwhelming response
his appeal has generated indicates that this problem will
be solved soon but what about the next time?

This problem has been solved in the military and in the
crypto world (see:
http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/faq/3-6-12.html for a 
somewhat dry and mathematical explanation of 'secret sharing').

However most of us don't have the time or the resources to 
implement these schemes. 

If the injured/dead person is very active online, a related 
problem is letting the online community know of his/her status.
An enterprising programmer created a program  - 'Dead Man's 
Switch' - that will send email, encrypt incriminating files 
and post to pre-defined webpages if it is not reset by a given
time. The software is at: http://daisyman.arsware.org/dms/
However, this is liable to cause much confusion if the user
goes on vacation and the software informs everyone of his/her
demise.

In short, it looks like there is no single solution. But we
all need to be aware of these and come up with our own 
solutions.

- 'shal

-- 
 http://www.mumbai-central.com : Where Mumbaikars meet


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