Let's try to guess the password you're using. QWERTY1234; 12345; Qwerty; aBc123 or trustno1 or qzpm123; If you're using any of the above passwords, change it immediately: your password is on the list of the 25 worst passwords. If you change it, don't use the genius 111111 or letmein.
Decent passwords have one problem: they're impossible to remember.
Over a decade ago, Bill Gates predicted the end of passwords, but even today there are still people who have a post-it stuck to their screen that says “1234567.” Meanwhile, billions of passwords have been leaked and are being added to dictionaries using brute force applications.
But everything seems to indicate that the end of passwords could be coming. Microsoft has confirmed that it will “kill” passwords in Windows 10, introducing new options, with support for the Fast IDentity Online Standard (FIDO).
This means you'll be logging in with your face, your voice, your iris, your fingerprint, or a dongle, depending on which method your company chooses.
But it's not just for computers: Apple has also been using Touch ID since the iPhone 5 (and the iPad Air 2 and Mini 3) to replace passwords with fingerprints. Samsung also includes a fingerprint reader with the Galaxy S5.
While no technology is completely secure, fingerprint readers have improved a lot in recent years: Apple claims that you would have to try 50,000 different fingers to find a random match. It also claims that the method is much more secure than the one in 10,000 chance of revealing a four-digit passcode.
It's much easier to forget a password than it is to forget your fingers or your eyes. Apple and Microsoft's FIDO-enabled systems have a different architecture to the old password model: fingerprints or other biometrics are stored locally, making it much harder for hackers to mass-produce millions of credentials from a storage server, as is the case today.
The move that will take us away from passwords, however, must be done very carefully as we are talking about the use of biometrics.
Passwords are abstract (unless you're one of those idiots who uses their full name as a password) and impersonal. Biometric data, on the other hand, is very personal, and we all know the insatiable hunger of intelligence agencies. These types of data make this information irresistible targets.
