February 14, 2006 9:42 AM PST
Gates: End to passwords in sight
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Now, with Windows Vista, Gates feels he finally has the right weapons to supplant the password as a means of verifying who is who on computers and over the Internet.
The new operating system, due later this year, introduces a concept called InfoCards that gives users a better way to manage the plethora of Internet login names and passwords, as well as lets third parties help in the verification process. Vista will also make it easier to log on to PCs using something stronger than a password alone, such as a smart card.
"We're laying the foundation for what we need," Gates said in a speech at the RSA Conference 2006 here.
Even with the advancements, Gates said he wasn't naive enough to think the password would go away overnight.
"I don't pretend that we are going to move away from passwords overnight, but over three or four years, for corporate systems, this change can and should happen," he said.
Replacing passwords is part of Microsoft's endeavor to simplify security, which Gates said is dearly needed. "We have an overly complex system today," he said. Vista and Microsoft's upcoming security products, such as Windows OneCare Live and Microsoft Client Protection, will make life easier for consumers, he said.
Microsoft has described InfoCard as a technology that gives users a single place to manage various authentication and payment information, in the same way a wallet holds multiple credit cards.
InfoCard is Microsoft's second try at an authentication technology after its largely failed Passport single sign-on service, unveiled in 1999.
InfoCard attempts to address the complaint many critics had with Passport, which was that people's information was managed by Microsoft instead of by the users themselves and the businesses with which they dealt.
Although Microsoft has talked about InfoCard, and early versions of the InfoCard code were released to developers last year, Gates' speech marked one of the first times Microsoft has demonstrated publicly just how it might work.
In a presentation, Microsoft showed how a consumer could use a self-generated InfoCard to log in to a car rental site and then use a separate InfoCard from a membership group to get a discount on the rental.
Internet Explorer 7 will support InfoCard, Gates announced. The technology will also be available for Windows XP, Microsoft said. InfoCard is one of several technologies Microsoft is developing for Vista, but the company is also making it available for XP.
Microsoft acknowledged that replacing passwords is something that needs to be done at the system level, but Gates said the company is also working on technologies to enable various identity systems used on the Internet to work together, something it calls the Identity Metasystem.
Video: The end of passwords?
Bill Gates urges the death of all passwords and offers alternatives from Microsoft.
In order to provide people with better identity verification as they do business online, Microsoft is asking for a stronger type of digital certificate, a so-called high-assurance certificate.
Digital certificates are already widely used today in Web browsers to show that traffic on a Web site is encrypted and that a third party has identified the site and has vouched for its validity. But in recent years, standards of verification have slipped, undermining the sense of security implied by the padlock. That's why Microsoft and others have called for a new type of certificate.
Microsoft on Tuesday announced the first beta of Microsoft Certificate Lifecycle Manager, a tool meant to streamline provisioning, configuration and management of digital certificates and smart cards, the company said.
All eyes on anti-spyware
Gates also touted several of the other security capabilities that will be part of Windows Vista. In a demonstration, Microsoft showed its anti-spyware technology, as well as a new mode that runs Internet Explorer in its own "sandbox" so Internet code can't cross over into the rest of a PC.
As expected, the company on Tuesday released a second beta version of Windows AntiSpyware, now called Windows Defender. The first test version of the spyware-fighting tool has been popular, with more than 25 million downloads from Microsoft's Web site.
Windows AntiSpyware has been available in a beta version since January of last year. The program is designed to protect PCs against spyware, which is software installed on a system that's designed to watch the computer user's activity without his or her knowledge.
Windows Defender already exists by that name in the latest preview release of Vista. Microsoft plans to ship Windows Defender as part of the operating system, it has said. At last year's RSA Conference, Gates announced that Microsoft would deliver anti-spyware at no cost.
IE 7 also was announced at last year's RSA event. It includes many security and privacy protection capabilities, such as mechanisms designed to combat phishing attacks, spyware and other threats. Cyberattackers have exploited security flaws and weaknesses in the current version of Microsoft's Web browser in many attacks. A public preview of IE 7 was released in late January.
See more CNET content tagged:
Microsoft Windows CardSpace, Bill Gates, digital certificate, single sign-on, RSA Security Inc.
34 comments
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producing bad copies of other people's work?
I'll give him this though, the man has serious stones. Who else has
the nerve to make a defective product and then sell partial
solutions to the problems they've caused a la Windows Defender?
fingerpriint, or skin pattern scans?
A card would unnecessarily duplicate information that service
providers already store... and put it in a nice, stealable format.
Exactly what does an infocard give the consumer?
like the Keychain in Mac OS X?
There are comparable tools and utilities on linux.
I'm all for getting rid of password management and I love
Keychain.
I can see that it would be cool to have something more like
biometrics or a security card, which have been implemented in
various forms for at least 5-10 years anyway on PCs. When I
worked at Novell in 2001, there were ways to get into the
eDirectory using biometrics fairly simply, and thus into Windows
2000, via the Netware client.
I hope this gets traction, but to give the impression that
Microsoft is inventing it, well, that's just Microsoft. They
wouldn't know innovation if it came up and bit them in the face.
>something more like biometrics or a security
>card, which have been implemented in various
>forms for at least 5-10 years anyway on PCs.
In large wide scale deployments, biometrics are probably an extremely bad idea. Biometrics can be compromised. Example, if someone were to steal your fingerprints, you're forever compromised since you only have one set.
Biometrics are better designed for specialized situations in closed environments as opposed to the open environment of the Internet.
As for security cards, I personally would never use one that was issued by Microsoft. I might use one that was issued by my bank, and then only for bank related activities.
I ran "SpyBot Search & Destroy" and "Lavasoft Ad-aware" on the same box. They both found stuff, 10-14 things.
What is Windows Defender defending?
find more "inspriation" for Vista's "innovation".
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.essentialsecurity.com/features.htm" target="_newWindow">http://www.essentialsecurity.com/features.htm</a>
Guess what? I find after the purchase that Microsoft warns not to use the fingerprint reader for anything important because the file where the collection of web-passwords is kept is apparently unencrypted or minimally encrypted on the hard drive. Now really, how hard would it be to secure the file with a bazillion-bit encryption built into the reader-driver?
Is this M$'s idea of security? Looks good on the surface, but is easily circumvented if someone gains access to your computer?
Now that's control.
With the InfoCard system I expect (much like Passport) they will also have some control over what you are doing.
So, they control what goes on or stays off your system and also knows where you are accessing.
It's nice to see the status-quo has been maintained.
has said so far gives the concept any credibility as a password
replacement. After Passport, and now InfoCard, I think that I'll stay
with passwords.
There would have to be some kind of password protection to the card itself or else anybody could just slot it in and away they go.
Sorry Billy... but this wet dream about doing away with passwords has already curdled.
Walt
INFO CARD IS NOT AN ACTUAL CARD. There is no mag stripe, no smart chip, no plastic, no card reader. It is a SOFTWARE authentication system that saves a user from having to transmit personal or financial information.
InfoCard is only a NAME. Seriously, does anyone even bother to read anymore?