Thread: Building Windows 8: Signing in with a picture password

Ah this I found to be a great tip. I love it. Thanks.

I have been using the Picture Password w/ Win8 for about 18 months... love it!

Cheers,
Drew

How is a picture password safer than a regular password?

The only difference is that it uses a visual cue as a form of two-step authentication. You have to be able to see the image, and also interact with it, in order to clear the password. How this is used in cryptography, with Kerberos, to make it more difficult to break, I'm not sure. To give you an example, though, with a regular password, you would not need to see visual cue/artifact/image and interact with it. This should make brute force methods more complex, as well as the ability for a malware program to clone the screen.

One is just as safe as the other. That said...

If someone ever discovered your P/W, they could type it in but, nobody would not be able to know YOUR gestures used w/ a picture password. Not only does this hold true for 'hands on' but, an outside hacked MIGHT crack a P/W but, again, could not know how to deal w/ a picture password.

Aside from that sort of thing... I just find it easier & quicker than typing in a P/W & my chosen picture is nice to look at/see.

Cheers,
Drew

Isn't the whole discussion with respect to security sort of moot. As I don't see how you can have one without the other.
The text password is first of all the whole underpinning of your Microsoft Account globally. So unless someone has figured out how to have a picture password without first having a text password then I'm not sure that the whole Picture Password enhances security discussion merits much attention, since the option to switch between picture, pin and normal password screens are available to anyone logging on locally.