Look, Ma, No More Passwords - Steve Gibson

I've been listening to Steve Gibson's weekly Security Now podcast almost from its beginning close to 15 years ago. We're now up to podcast number 737. I've referred to him in numerous posts over the years. 

Once upon a time we didn't need passwords and all that that entails. But that was another time. Now along with encryption, our lives and fortunes depend on them. It's been harder and harder to stay ahead of the black hat hackers. Hardly a day goes by that we don't hear about data breaches, data and identity theft and actual loss of money. For a while we thought we were being clever by substituting "3s" for "Es", "0s" for "Os" and vice versa. It didn't take hackers long to figure that out. Then we went to two-factor and other biometric methods to stay secure. Finally we started using password managers like LastPass or 1PassWord to create truly long, random passwords. That's pretty much were we are today, but even these measures provide some, though minimal, friction. 

Imagine if we could use modern cryptography in such a way that would not require us to use passwords per se at all. Well, Steve Gibson has come up with just such a way. It's called SQRL (squirrel) and it's taken him close to five years to perfect it. Make no mistake, passwords aren't going away anytime soon, but as SQRL sees adoption, it will increase security without a trade-off in convenience. The link below is from a presentation Steve did recently to a group in Sweden. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6J1Yt8YYj0

-Bill