Who is Fernando José “Corby” Corbato? We live in the age of surveillance. This means that long, static passwords, even if they consist of combinations of letters, numbers, and symbols that the online community uses, are meaningless, since if someone wants to crack them, they will crack them anyway.
If it has difficulty due to its size and complexity, wait a while until it acquires the necessary computing power.
Many encryption protocols have been breached (we're talking about those that took responsibility for reporting it) and others are suspected of leaving backdoors to intelligence agencies like the NSA.
However, passwords are still one of the main “security” measures in our online lives. In recent years, additional security measures have emerged, such as two-factor authentication, while laboratories are feverishly testing new biometric systems that will ensure end-user privacy.
But how did passwords come about? Who used the first one?
Mr. Fernando J. Corbato or Fernando José “Corby” Corbató was born on July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California.
He received his bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1950, and then a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1956.
He joined the MIT computer department immediately after graduation, becoming a professor in 1965. He remained at MIT until his retirement.
Corbato is responsible for developing MIT's first time-sharing system, known as the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Corbato is also credited with the first use of passwords to secure access to files on computer systems, although he now says that this rudimentary security method became something of a nightmare:
“Kind of a nightmare”
In an interview he gave to the WSJ in 2014, Fernando Corbató mentions the question:
WSJ: So, how did passwords get out of control?
Corbato: Unfortunately, it's become a kind of nightmare with the World Wide Web. I don't think anyone can possibly remember all the passwords they've been issued. That leaves people with two options. Either keep them on paper, or use some kind of program like password managers.
Either one or the other is annoying.
WSJ: How did you come up with the first computer password?
Corbato: The concept of a password goes way back. What would have happened if we shared a mainframe and had a shared file on disk. People don't share. It was just an attempt to create some kind of compartmentalization so people didn't have to live in a shared environment.
I wanted to avoid the hassle of people and everyone's files.
Fernando J. Corbató Turing Award
