Sun, Jan 6 2008 14:53
bradley
The longer the password... I mean passphase...
As I'm building the latest beta for Centro in VMware one of the fun things about having several betas underway is that you hit the issue of "the password". The current public release of Windows 2008 enabled the complexity requirement of passwords. Some of the other betas I'm on kick in an additional requirement for changing the password every 41 days. So I end up in that list of builds you see below the issue of "the passphrase"....
The password supplied does not meet the minimum complexity requirements. Please select another password that meets all of the following criteria:
is at least x characters;
has not been used in the previous x passwords;
does not contain your account or full name;
contains at least three of the following four character groups:
English uppercase characters (A through Z);
English lowercase characters (a through z);
Numerals (0 through 9);
Non-alphabetic characters (such as !, $, #, %)
I'll be the first to admit that about 1/2 of those virtual machines have exactly the same Administrator user name and passphrase. The others are on a variant because the 42 days has passed and has forced a passphrase change.
The stronger the passphrase, the longer you can set that expiration date. What ends up happening in 42 days is by changing it this quickly I end up using variants. If, instead I made a longer passphrase, and wrote it down, I'd be better off as I could adjust that policy setting to not need changing as often.
And of course with something like
www.AuthAnvil.com, you can make that even LONGER of a period to change passphrases.
Filed under: Security
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