The Espionage

Many people are too scared to use a password manager because they do not trust the service. I will show you a trick to get of all the privacy you shall ever need. We will use partial passwords. Partial passwords are the power supreme!

Step 1 - Edit Passwords at the Real Websites:

Let’s say I have an E-trade account. Say my E-trade username is Stockinator and my password is m@dddMONEY. Those are decent credentials. Now I establish my partial password. Use the partial password as a suffix which goes on the end of the normal password. I used to have a 1997 Camry (not really). 1997camcam sounds pretty good. I log in to E-trade. I change my password from m@dddMONEY to m@dddMONEY1997camcam. Now we are talking password, baby! Repeat this process at other websites of importance. Remember, we haven’t touched the Password Manager yet.

Step 2 - Edit Passwords On The Password Manager:

I clicked on a Google Ad that said “Store Your Passwords Online With The Devil”. Sure why not. So I signed up and put all of my credentials in my online account at satan-stores-passwords.com. When I added E-trade to my favorites, I entered my username as Stockinator and my password as m@dddMONEY. Months later a scandal breaks. Turns out satan-stores-passwords.com was running a shady operation. Who knew? All of my accounts are compromised. Not quite, broseph. My real password over at E-trade is m@dddMONEY1997camcam. My E-trade account is safe. I was storing a partial password. I can get even sexier. I could store my partial password as a fake password in a fake favorite. Now I don’t even have to remember it. Well sort of. I still have to remember which favorite is the fake. You get the point.

Advantages of Partial Passwords:

• Eliminate the need to trust the password manager.
• Critical passwords become twice as strong.

Disadvantages:

• One more thing to remember.
• Problems with any kind of automated authentication.

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Tags: partial passwords, privacy, Security, trust

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.