Picture passwords promising, security researcher says
The security of Windows 8 picture passwords might not be as weak as some recent headlines indicate, and there are ways to maximize how hard they are to crack, researchers say.
Unlocking a Windows 8 machine by tapping points, circling objects, and drawing lines over an image on a touchscreen is no less secure than using a four-digit PIN to secure a cell phone's SIM card, says Sophos researcher Paul Ducklin on the NakedSecurity blog.
And by following advice issued by Microsoft itself, picture passwords can be made significantly more secure. The issue came up when researchers at the Usenix Security Symposium proposed a scheme improving attackers' odds of defeating the picture passwords, and flashy headlines about the paper said the research found that picture passwords were easily cracked.
