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Can anyone explain why this is? I've never heard a security reason for this.
by jamieomatthews 12y ago
Can anyone explain why this is? I've never heard a security reason for this.
- eudox 12y agoGuess 1: They append either one of those characters to the password to store some form of information. Guess 2: The characters are column separators in some form of data store.
- ShaneWilton 12y agoOn some older keypad layouts, Q and Z aren't associated with a number. It could be some misguided attempt at backwards compatibility.
- cgtyoder 12y agoShit poor security? It almost sounds like they end up converting the stored password to digits, based on letters associated with numbers on a standard phone (originally 'Q' and 'Z' were omitted). I wonder if they consider 'ad4jmp' and '2ehkn7' different passwords. That would be an interesting test.
- 30thElement 12y agoWhile the other answers about Sabre are probably right, I've heard that banks intentionally have stupid password policies to prevent password reuse. If one bank says "no special characters but most contain a number", another says "must contain a special character, but no numbers", and a 3rd says "must contain a number and special character", they can guarantee that if one of the 3 is hacked into it doesn't compromise people with accounts at all 3 (of course ignoring people using "password" with a 1 or ! on the end).
- frogpelt 12y agoThis would require cooperation.
- jdonahue 12y agoMarketing? A sane password policy doesn't get you to #2 on HN.