Strong passwords, stronger extortionists

I’ve posted before about passwords, specifically about the large number of extremely weak passwords revealed by the Adobe hackers. I recently saw a story on the BBC web site about a password that the security forces couldn’t crack. Here’s the article:

Man jailed for refusing to give police USB stick password

The password was $ur4ht4ub4h8, apparently a play on words relating to a chapter of the Koran. Next time some piece of software insists your password must include a mix of upper and lower case letters you can tell it to go take a hike.

If the password was so uncrackable, you may wonder, how come it’s in the article? Well as usual the security of your password is only part of the story, the authorities have many ways of extorting your passwords out of you, as this article describes:

David Miranda feels ‘invaded’ after password disclosure

The moral of the story, if there is one, might be that however secure your data is, you yourself are more easily hacked.