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In this internet regime, we depend greatly on internet based services to accomplish our tasks by expending little or no time and even with the least effort possible. Just think about our dependence on internet for a second ! We use it for bank transactions, purchases and even pass our time with some social networking and other entertaining stuff. This is a very minute list of tasks that we usually carry out using internet but our original list will be very humongous. One thing we find in common in all these internet based services is the authenticating procedure that the user encounters before he/she access the actual content in the service. This is a common and necessary procedure in order to avoid the one's individual content to reach the hands of lunatics and people with bad instincts. In order to protect the confidential and personal information every internet related service, let it be a banking website or a social networking site prompts you to create a membership and login with the registered username and password every time you visit their websites. This is the only procedure we are following to protect our online data for decades. Even though many complex encryption techniques were evolved in recent past, these techniques ultimately failed to restrict the hackers from intruding into the websites of some leading services with a massive user base. Usually we come across several incidents exposing the loopholes in the leading servers through which the black hat hackers grab the access of other's bank accounts and loot their money in a flash.
These incidents portrays the inefficiency of these passwords in protecting our online data. There are several reasons for these kind of hacker attacks and it will be injustice if we solely blame the service providers because you could also be a reason for a hacker attack on your own account. Confused !!! Yes but its true. Being humans we remember simple things easily and passwords must be remembered by us because no one can steal your password from your mind. So, in the fear of forgetting a password user will involuntarily choose an easy to remember password thereby increasing the chances of getting hacked. The probability of getting hacked is inversely proportional to the complexity of your password. Also it is not advisable to prefer same password for all the accounts you run online because if by any means one of the account is successfully hacked then it automatically opens the door for other accounts also. So if you are using a dozen accounts online, it is preferable to have a dozen dedicated passwords for those services. If you just count the number of online accounts that you run online the number will definitely go past 25 because now-a-days every website or service we use demands a login in order to protect their customer data to a better extent. So, a new problem of remembering passwords arouse in these recent past. It is not so easy to remember all the passwords starting from your Facebook account to your online banking account. So in order to over come the burden of remembering passwords and entering them for authentication, several alternatives were investigated.
"Of 32 million passwords revealed during one security breach, more than 290,000 turned out to be ‘123456’, according to Imperva, a Californian security company. --Taken from bbc.com/story"
Alternative Authentication methods:-
For the conventional passwords we use the most backed and supported alternative is biometric data. This Biometric authentication techniques involve Finger print scanning and iris scanning and others. This technique is very hard and almost impossible to crack but it has its cons also. In order to deploy this system a lot of infrastructural changes must be done. In order to scan finger prints, Iris scans or voice the computers or mobile phones that we use to login must be fitted with the scanners and dedicated software which will seem impractical in a holistic view. In addition to the raised cost proper maintenance is a vital issue. There were ongoing researches on the Persona based authentication that rely on the behavioral analysis of your online activity and the height of the phone from ground when answer a call and many other. By maintaining and verifying tonnes of your behavioral data you can get access into your account. This kind of approach is far from reality because there will always be a possibility that two of the user posses almost same behavioral data and also due to misinterpretations even you will be blocked to access your account. Apart from these researches new kinds of crazy authentications are making news in the technical world. This kind of approaches evolved from the labs of Google and Motorola are getting divided responses. This new way of authentication make use of tattoos and Pills to remember your passwords.
Password Pills and tattoos - Is is necessary??
Password Pill yes you read it right!! If you think that it is a memory boosting pill then you are mistaken. It actually gives you a leverage to forget all your passwords. It is a very tiny electronic circuit that is embed into a capsule (like your vitamin tablet) which runs on a battery powered by your gastric juices in the digestive system. Once the pill crosses your esophagus and hits the gastric juices in your stomach, it starts its working. There will be a switch which switches ON and OFF at regular intervals and generates a 18 bit code which is then transmitted by the chip present in your stomach to the receiver and decoder present in your smartphone or tablet decodes the data and grants you access. It is not only restricted to Online accounts you can even authenticate and open your house doors and cars and possibilities are endless. With this kind of approach we can involuntarily login to our accounts with out the need of remembering complex passwords. When once you register your passwords with Motorola then you can forget it and they will provide you with the pills developed for your password. Same is the thing with the tattoos also.
Pros and Cons :-
After this announcement was made in the D11 conference this technology received a divided response. Since Motorola is actually owned by Google majority of people are suspecting that it is an attempt by Google to track your activity more but the Former DARPA head and now incharge at advanced research at Motorola Regina Dugan clarified that the chip only senses the fluids in the stomach and use it for switching the circuit on. Though the drug was accepted by FDA and other drug administrators, common public are not ready to take a pill every day only for the purpose of logging into their accounts. There are a lot of practical difficulties involved in this technique, the important question that arises from a large volume of public is that "What if my pills are stolen by somebody?" there is no gun shot answer available from its developers till now and since it is still in research stage let's hope that the researcher
s fix those problems and eventually bring them into markets. Still the question is unanswered "Do we really need these pills and tattoos to remember your passwords?" well !! we cannot say!! its left to you to decide.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
What's voltage and potential difference?I do know that its a simple question,but the answer should be in its simplest form so that even a fresher to the subject can understand that easily...
ReplyDeleteHi anonymous,
DeleteBoth Voltage and Potential difference are one and the same.They are basically two different names which define the same thing. We all knew that current is nothing but movement of electrons in a medium.As you had insisted us to explain it in a simplest way possible, let us take a simple example to explain both the terms. Assume that there is a hill(at height "h"from ground) and a water stream is flowing on the hill and is falling into a valley.Also consider there is a big rock (at a height"H<<h" from the ground)in the valley on to which the water is falling with some force. The force with which the water falls depend on the height difference between the hill and the rock. The impact or force of water is more if the height difference is more because of varying potential energy. The concept you asked is analogues to this. Lets try to compare, The water stream is nothing but current in a circuit, the height of hill and rock are similar to the electric potentials at two points in a circuit between which current is flowing. The variation in heights(h-H) between hill and rock is nothing but the height difference which is similar to "Potential difference" in case of electricity which is also called "Voltage" and this is the factor which gives force to the current in the circuit just like height difference does in case of water stream..If voltage or potential difference is high,the force on the electron current is high, if voltage is low, force is also low on current. Hope this is helpful..Don't forget to Provide your feedback on this answer..
so,voltage and potential differennce have the same meaning right?
ReplyDeleteWe shouldn't say that both of them carry the same meaning.Instead we can say they can be used interchangeably. Potential difference is the electrical entity by virtue of the potential at two points and voltage is the effect due to the potential difference. To be clear potential difference is the cause and Voltage is the effect.
DeleteJust read the following statements and feel the difference:
1)Voltage between two points is zero because the potential difference between two points is zero.
2)Potential difference between two points is zero because the voltage between two points is zero.
Which of the above statement is correct?? First statement is accurate but not the second one..Voltage(effect) is the force that exists only when there is a potential difference(cause).(potential difference is like a slap and voltage is like a pain due to that slap..Pain is caused by slap but the converse is not true).But in this case the two statements infer same thing that is voltage= potential difference=0 and hence both are interchangeably used...Hope this will be useful..Don't forget to provide your feedback.
We shouldn't say that both of them carry the same meaning.Instead we can say they can be used interchangeably. Potential difference is the electrical entity by virtue of the potential at two points and voltage is the effect due to the potential difference. To be clear potential difference is the cause and Voltage is the effect.
ReplyDeleteJust read the following statements and feel the difference:
1)Voltage between two points is zero because the potential difference between two points is zero.
2)Potential difference between two points is zero because the voltage between two points is zero.
Which of the above statement is correct?? First statement is accurate but not the second one..Voltage(effect) is the force that exists only when there is a potential difference(cause).(potential difference is like a slap and voltage is like a pain due to that slap..Pain is caused by slap but the converse is not true).But in this case the two statements infer same thing that is voltage= potential difference=0 and hence both are interchangeably used...Hope this will be useful..Don't forget to provide your feedback.
Hanq that was really helpful
ReplyDelete