Who is Fernando José “Corby” Corbato? We live in the age of surveillance. This means that large static passwords even if they consist of combinations of characters, numbers, and symbols used by the online community are irrelevant, since if anyone wants to break it, it will break it 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.
Despite this, passwords are still one of the main "security" measures in our online lives. In recent years, additional security measures have appeared, such as control two-factor authentication, while labs are feverishly busy testing new biometric systems that will 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 on 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.
Corbato is responsible for developing MIT's first time-sharing system, which became known as the Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS). Corbato is also credited with first using the first passwords to secure access to archives found on computer systems, 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
