As the network services continue to enrich, the number of passwords we need to use increases, and the trouble of passwords comes one after another

As the network services continue to enrich, the number of passwords we need to use increases, and the trouble of passwords comes one after another

When Web services were simple and we didn't need to use many passwords, it was a low-barrier, easy-to-use form of authentication. As the network services continue to enrich, the number of passwords we need to use increases, and the trouble of passwords comes one after another. Many passwords are easy to forget, in order to avoid forgetting people tend to use simple passwords, or multiple passwords, ultimately leading to a series of security problems.

Research by security firm SplashData shows that "123456" has dominated the list since 2013, with 123456789, "password" and "qwerty" among the TOP five. These weak passwords usually take less than a second to break, but they are still widely used, and their security risks are incalculable.

Fernando Corbato, the Turing Award winner and inventor of digital cryptography, has said that passwords are a modern nightmare. No one can remember them all, and the choice between memorizing them in a notebook or managing them in software means a lot of trouble.

Corbato led the establishment of the first time-sharing operating system CTSS (Compatible Time-Sharing System) in 1961, the first computer to use passwords as system protection. The first ever leak of computer passwords occurred on the same system. Due to a software bug, the system confused the welcome message with the master password, resulting in a list of CTSS passwords visible to everyone logged into the system.

In the decades since, people have improved the way they store passwords to make them more secure. However, these methods have not fundamentally changed the way people remember passwords, and the gates of passwords have never been eliminated.