Thursday, May 26, 2016

If Microsoft is banning stupid passwords, why does it still allow “Pa$$w0rd”?

As Microsoft pats itself on the back for its crackdown on easily cracked passwords, keep this in mind: a quick check shows users still have plenty of leeway to make poor choices. Like "Pa$$w0rd" (excluding the quotation marks).

As a Microsoft program manager announced earlier this week, the Microsoft Account Service used to log in to properties such as Xbox Live and OneDrive Azure has been dynamically banning commonly used passwords during the account-creation or password-change processes. Try choosing "12345678," "password," or "letmein"—as millions of people regularly do—and you'll get a prompt telling you to try again. Microsoft is in the process of adding this feature to the Azure Active Directory so enterprise customers using the service can easily stop employees from taking security shortcuts, as well.

But a quick check finds it's not hard to get around the ban. To wit: "Pa$$w0rd1" worked just fine. And in fairness to Microsoft, Google permitted the same hopelessly weak choice.

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