Pete's Linux Advent Calendar 2008

The 6th day

When Usernames are like Passwords

Some time ago when I used to check my mail with mailx I visited a fair and one booth had freely accessible computers. So I thought, great, let me check my mail. So I used telnet to log in to my workstation, and the login looked like this:

login: krp02078

I didn't notice that someone looked over my shoulder, who obviously hadn't seen a telnet session before, and said: "What's that? That looks very insecure when the password is displayed on the screen".

Pete's Linux Advent Calendar 2008

Comments? send mail to pkruse@arcor.de