Who is Fernando José “Corby” Corbato? We live in the age of surveillance. This means that long static passwords even if they consist of combinations of characters, numbers and symbols used by the online community are meaningless, since if someone wants to break, will break him anyway.
If it is difficult due to its size and complexity, wait for it to acquire the necessary computational power.
Many encryption protocols have been tampered with (we are talking about those who have taken responsibility to report it) and others are suspected of leaving backdoors to information services such as the NSA.
However, passwords are still one of the main "security" measures in our online lives. In recent years, additional security measures have emerged, such as two-factor authentication, while laboratories are busy testing new biometric systems to ensure end-user privacy.
But how did the passwords start? Who used the first one?
Mr. Fernando J. Corbato or Fernando José “Corby” Corbató was born July 1, 1926 in Oakland, California.
He received his degree from the 1950 Institute of Technology of California, and then a Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 1956.
He joined MIT's computer department shortly after graduating, and became a professor at 1965. He stayed at MIT until he retired.
Ο Corbato είναι υπεύθυνος για την ανάπτυξη του πρώτου συστήματος καταμερισμού του χρόνου του ΜΙΤ που έγινε γνωστό σαν Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Ο Corbato πιστώνεται και με την πρώτη χρήση των πρώτων κωδικών πρόσβασης για την εξασφάλιση της πρόσβασης σε αρχεία που βρίσκονται σε συστήματα computer, although he now reports that this rudimentary security method has become something of a nightmare:
"Kind of a nightmare"
In an interview given to WSJ by 2014, Fernando Corbató says:
WSJ: So how did passwords get out of control?
Corbato: Unfortunately it has become something of a nightmare with the World Wide Web. I don't think everyone can possibly remember all the passwords they've issued. This leaves people with two options. Either keep them on some paper, or use some kind of program like them password managers.
Either or the other is annoying.
WSJ: How did you come up with the first computer password?
Corbato: The concept of a password goes a long way. What would happen if we were sharing a mainframe and had a shared file on the disk. People do not share. It was just an attempt to create some sort of partitioning and so people did not have to live in a shared environment.
I wanted to avoid the fuss from people and records of everyone.
Fernando J. Corbató Turing Award
