Edward Snowden says your password should be MargaretThatcherIs110%SEXY

Graham Cluley @ 7:07 pm, April 9, 2015
@[email protected]
@gcluley

The recent hilarious interview between John Oliver and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has served up another juicy titbit.

Check out this clip (which wasn’t broadcast on TV) of Snowden offering advice on passwords.

Watch the video which Last Week Tonight with John Oliver posted on YouTube.

Edward Snowden on Passwords: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Watch this video on YouTube

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Very funny.

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Graham Cluley • @gcluley

Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

4 comments on “Edward Snowden says your password should be MargaretThatcherIs110%SEXY”

Anonymous

April 12, 2015 at 2:02 pm

Thanks for posting these, very funny and I'd have probably missed them had you not.

Reply
Hitoshi Anatomi

April 13, 2015 at 6:46 am

I think I can remember "MargaretThatcherIs110%SEXY", but not more than several of similar ones Another problem is that I do not think I can remember the relations of which passphrase is used for which account. At the end of the day I would either have to re-use the same passphrase across many accounts or or have to carry around a memo with the accounts and corresponding passphrases on it..

Biometrics that have to depend on a password cannot be a solution. We urgently need a successor to the character password, which should be found from among the broader family of the passwords and the likes.

Reply
1. Graham Cluley · in reply to Hitoshi Anatomi
  
  April 13, 2015 at 8:13 am
  
  Can't remember your passwords/passphrases for different sites?
  
  Use a password manager like LastPass, 1Password, KeePass etc. :)
  
  Reply
snowraptor

April 14, 2015 at 12:29 pm

LOL that is hilarious. And is it just me or is that interviewer David Mitchell's separated-at-birth twin?!

I predict there will soon be as many people using "MargaretThatcherIs110%SEXY" as there are using "correcthorsebatterystaple" (https://www.xkcd.com/936/)

Reply