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Does it actually make it less secure though? Consider the situations where each password is used: 1. Your password is required online where the full password
by abduhl 11y ago
Does it actually make it less secure though? Consider the situations where each password is used:
1. Your password is required online where the full password must be entered and the numerically reduced password is not accepted. This results in no loss of difficulty in the password.
2. Your password is required over the phone where the password is reduced to a T9 password. Despite the fact that the solution space has been cut down significantly (by 33%^n), the password cannot be broken any quicker because the bottleneck for this case is not computational power but rather the phone system. You can brute force all of the passwords in X seconds, but this is irrelevant because you can't try more than 1 password per call and you can't call more than Y times per second.
- mikeash 11y agoGood points. I would still say yes, although it's not a particularly huge problem. One scenario where it could be problematic is if the password database is stolen and nobody notices. They could then potentially brute force your numeric password and then access your account by phone. In the universe of banking this is pretty small potatoes, though. My bank uses a case insensitive comparison for passwords (!), limits them to 8 characters (!!), and silently truncates anything over the limit (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). They say they're fixing it. But it sure is taking a long time.