Auth is Never Easy - Paul Ford

Paul Ford:

I once talked to someone at a big tech/media company. They were working on a single login portal across a range of games and experiences. “How long have you been working on it?” I asked, and their answer still chills me: “48 months.” If they’d said “four years,” we both would have died from the pain of it-four years on passwords, four years never to return.

At that moment, nearly a decade ago, I learned to treat all matters of authentication as radioactive career-destroyers. Nothing I’ve learned since has changed my mind. Everyone pretends this problem is solved, and that the state of things is as good as it can get. We pretend this as we log in to our televisions and update the firmware on our dishwashers, surrounded by beeps and bloops.

— Paul Ford for Wired Magazine’s Dec 2023/Jan 2024 issue Resolving Host…

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