CORPORATE DIRECTIVE NUMBER 88-570471 In order to increase the security of all company computing facilities, and to avoid the possibility of unauthorized use of these facilities, new rules are being put into effect concerning the selection of passwords. All users of computing facilities are instructed to change their passwords to conform to these rules immediately. RULES FOR THE SELECTION OF PASSWORDS: 1. A password must be at least six characters long, and must not contain two occurrences of a character in a row, or a sequence of two or more characters from the alphabet in forward or reverse order. Example: HGQQXP is an invalid password. GFEDCB is an invalid password. 2. A password may not contain two or more letters in the same position as any previous password. Example: If a previous password was GKPWTZ, then NRPWHS would be invalid because PW occurs in the same position in both passwords. 3. A password may not contain the name of a month or an abbreviation for a month. Example: MARCHBC is an invalid password. VWMARBC is an invalid password. 4. A password may not contain the numeric representation of a month. Therefore, a password containing any number except zero is invalid. Example: WKBH3LG is invalid because it contains the numeric representation for the month of March. 5. A password may not contain any words from any language. Thus, a password may not contain the letters A, or I, or sequences such as AT, ME, or TO because these are all words. 6. A password may not contain sequences of two or more characters which are adjacent to each other on a keyboard in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal direction. Example: QWERTY is an invalid password. GHNLWT is an invalid password because G and H are horizontally adjacent to each other. HUKWVM is an invalid password because H and U are diagonally adjacent to each other. 7. A password may not contain the name of a person, place, or thing. Example: JOHNBOY is an invalid password. Because of the complexity of the password selection rules, there is actually only one password which passes all the tests. To make the selection of this password simpler for the user, it will be distributed to all supervisors. All users are instructed to obtain this password from his or her supervisor and begin using it immediately. For immediate issue: Password changing guidelines V2.2b Due to new security policies, the following guidelines have been issued to assist in choosing new passwords. Please follow them closely. Passwords must conform to at least 21 of the following attributes. 1. Minimum length 8 characters 2. Not in any dictionary. 3. No word or phrase bearing any connection to the holder. 4. Containing no characters in the ASCII character set. 5. No characters typeable on a Sun type 5 keyboard 6. No subset of one character or more must have appeared on Usenet news, /dev/mem, rand(3), or the King James bible (version 0.1alpha) 7. Must be quantum theoretically secure, i.e. must automatically change if observed (to protect against net sniffing). 8. Binary representation must not contain any of the sequences 00 01 10 11, commonly known about in hacker circles. 9. Be provably different from all other passwords on the internet. 10. Not be representable in any human language or written script. 11. Colour passwords must use a minimum 32 bit pallette. 12. Changed prior to every use. 13. Resistant to revelation under threat of physical violence. 14. Contain tissue samples of at least 3 vital organs. 15. Incontravertible by OJ Simpsons lawyers. 16. Undecodable by virtue of application of 0 way hash function. 17. Odourless, silent, invisible, tasteless, weightless, shapeless, lacking form and inert. 18. Contain non-linear random S-boxes (without a backdoor). 19. Self-escrowable to enable authorities to capture kiddie-porn people and baddies but not the goodies ("but we'll only decode it with a court order, honest"). 20. Not decryptable by exhaustive application of possible one time pads. Due to the severity of the restrictions, if the password is entered incorrectly 3 times at login time, you will be asked if you would like to pick a new one. Please add guidelines to the above and adjust the minimum conformation requirement, if applicable. |
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