Post
Topic
Board Project Development
Merits 3 from 1 user
Re: 12 Word Recovery Phrase - a security weakness? My (free and simple!) solution(s)
by
o_e_l_e_o
on 08/10/2022, 08:49:03 UTC
⭐ Merited by vapourminer (3)
This is why you see people put passwords on their routers, but keep the password in plain text next to their computer.
Don't even get me started on this. At work we have to use about 8 different systems, all with the same username, but all with their own password requirements. Some mandate 8 letters, some 10. Some mandate at least one uppercase letter. Some mandate at least one number. Some mandate it must be at least "strong" on their unknown algorithm. And here's the best bit - all require mandatory password changes, but at different frequencies. The outcome is that you first set up access to all the systems with one good password. After 3 months, you have to change that password on a few of the systems, so you increment the number in the password by one. 3 months latter, you have to increment that number again, but also now increment the number on all the systems which mandate 6 monthly changes. Also, one of the systems will say this new password is too similar to the old one, so for that system you have to pick a new password altogether. 3 months later, do it all again. Very quickly you end up with 5 or 6 slightly different passwords, and you forget which one is for which system. And oh, if you enter the wrong password 3 times, your account is locked and you have to spend 20 minutes on the phone to IT to get it unlocked. What is the outcome of this? A very few people like myself use a password manager to deal with this for us. The vast majority have all their passwords written down on a piece of paper in their desk, their wallet, or (my favorite) stuck on the back of their ID badge.

Complex? Sure. Secure? Not at all.

while hand writing has the issues of spelling, or just the way you write things.
I can understand this being an issue with raw private keys, but I've never understood why it is an issue with seed phrases. The whole point of the BIP39 word list is to minimize issues like this, and you should be writing down your seed phrase in simple block capitals, and not cursive or anything else more difficult to read.