3 ms·
"Further, as groups of characters are typed, the images on the dialog change to distract the would-be onlooker from observing the number of (extraneous) charact
by smackfu 13y ago
"Further, as groups of characters are typed, the images on the dialog change to distract the would-be onlooker from observing the number of (extraneous) characters typed. "
Actually, the hieroglyphics are just another dubious security feature. The theory is that you know what the hieroglyphics are for the correct password, and if they aren't shown, the login box is being spoofed. In reality, this is dumb, since any regular Notes user just tunes out that part of the login box.
- danielweber 13y agoIf someone could memorize your hieroglyphics, does that mean they could perform an offline attack at guessing your password? Hell, even if they only memorized the first few sequences, they would know how your password starts.
- wikwocket 13y agoPresumably the hieroglyphics are generated based off a hash of what you're typing, so there will not be a one-to-one mapping of hieroglyphics back to data typed. Also, since the hieroglyphics are nonsensical and change quickly, you would probably find it easier to watch their physical keystrokes then trying to memorizing a stream of symbols. That said, all logical bets are off when analyzing a hare-brained feature like this.
- smackfu 13y agoIn the current implementation, it doesn't show them until after you type the fifth character, to prevent exactly this kind of attack. They also replaced the hieroglyphics with a key chain, which implies that at some point someone actually redesigned this wacky features.