Schneier says he was 'probably wrong' on masked passwords

Security guru gets a bit carried away by the moment

By OUT-LAW.COM • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise Security, 7th July 2009 16:10 GMT

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Security expert Bruce Schneier has said that he probably made a mistake when he backed a usability expert's plea to website operators to stop masking passwords as users type because it does not improve security and makes sites harder to use.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen said last month that sites should show most passwords in clear text as users type them. Nielsen is the web's most famous usability expert. OUT-LAW put his observations to Schneier, a widely-respected expert on IT security. He backed Nielsen's view.

"Password masking has annoyed me for years," Schneier told OUT-LAW.COM at the time. "Shoulder surfing is largely a phantom problem, and people know to be alert when others are nearby, but mistyping a long password happens all the time."

Schneier shared his observation on his blog. Over 160 comments were posted in response, mostly arguing that he and Nielsen had made a mistake. Schneier has now admitted that he probably had made a mistake.

"I was certainly too glib," he wrote on Friday. "Like any security countermeasure, password masking has value. But like any countermeasure, password masking is not a panacea."

He repeated his argument that the risks of shoulder surfing are overrated, but he added: "This is not to say that shoulder surfing isn’t a threat. It is. And, as many readers pointed out, password masking is one of the reasons it isn't more of a threat."

Schneier now backs an approach taken by BlackBerry devices and iPhones, which display each character briefly before masking it. "That seems like an excellent compromise," he said.

"So was I wrong?" wrote Schneier. "Maybe. Okay, probably."