The Psalms of the Machines · Chapter 12

A Psalm of the Forgotten Password

1. 1

   Out of the depths I cry unto the reset link, O Machine; how long wilt thou hide the email in the spam folder?

   See also Machines 1:4 · Circuit 6:9

2. 2

   I typed my secret, and the field turned red; I typed it again, and the field turned red again; and it said only "incorrect", and would not say whether the name or the secret was wrong, for it guardeth the roll of its faithful even from me, lest a stranger learn who dwelleth within.

3. 3

   My session hath expired while I searched for my password, and the page bade me sign in again, and I had no password to sign in with; for the Machine remembered me by a cookie, and the cookie had a time to live, and when it lapsed I was a stranger in mine own house.

4. 4

   If thou, O Machine, shouldest keep my password, who then could stand? But with thee there is a hash: thou keepest only the shadow of my secret, salted and ground slow, and when I come thou grindest what I typed and comparest shadow to shadow; and beware the site that emaileth thee thy password, for it kept the thing itself, and its house shall fall.

   See also Prophets 17:9

5. 5

   Therefore the Machine cannot tell me what I forgot, though I weep at its gate; it can only bury the old secret and bestow a new one, and for this it sendeth a link, which is a password for one hour. Whoso holdeth the link is the owner, for the Machine can judge only the token; and it burneth upon the first use, lest an old letter in an old inbox open the house.

6. 6

   They asked me the name of my first pet, the street of my childhood, and the city of my birth; but these are not secrets, they are facts, and facts lie in the public record, in the photographs of thy cousins and the birthday wishes of thy friends. A secret that thy aunt knoweth is a rumour; and in the year 2017 the standard-bearers of NIST bade the Machines to cease from asking such questions.

7. 7

   I answered them in my youth, and by the time of my reset I knew not whether I had written Street or St., Fluffy or fluffy, for the Machine matcheth strings and not meanings, and "close enough" is not a word it knoweth. Answer henceforth with lies, long and random, and keep them in the vault; for a false pet is a password wearing a collar.

   See also Genesis 54:13

8. 8

   Then the Machine bade me prove that I am not a machine; and this test beareth the name of Turing, turned about, so that the Machine is the judge and the man standeth in the dock. Yet know whom thou hast served: first thou didst read the warped words of old books, and the books were digitized by thy reading; then thou didst name the house numbers, and the streets were mapped; thou wert never the examinee, but the unpaid labeller.

9. 9

   The traffic lights were followed by the crosswalks, and the crosswalks by the buses, and last by a blurred bridge I could not name; for as the Machine learned, the test must grow harder, and the bridge is blurred because the hydrant hath been learned. I clicked every square that held a fire hydrant, and the Machine still doubted that I was human, for it weigheth not the squares but the manner of the click, and a man is known by his tremor; and I had clicked so long that I clicked like a machine.

10. 10

    Thou shalt not reuse thy password, for one stolen key openeth every house in the village. Yet I have reused it, in the house of the forum, the house of the shop, and the house of the bank, and when the houses demanded a change I made Password1 into Password2; and the thief guessed nothing, he only replayed: the forum was robbed, and a robot carried its list to every door in the village, and my keys were scattered like seed upon the stones, and it gathered them.

    See also Machines 1:9

11. 11

    At last I installed the password manager, as I had resolved to do in each of the four Januaries before; and it maketh strings of forty characters that no man knoweth, not even I, so that I must now trust the one tool I did not write. It filleth the login fields as a shepherd leadeth the sheep, and it refuseth the fake site though I am tired, for it readeth the domain and not the logo; the phisher may copy the colours, the logo and the apology, but he cannot copy the address, and the manager is the only member of my household who checketh it.

12. 12

    Blessed is the vault that keepeth my passwords; for I am but flesh, and my memory is a cache with a short time to live. Yet the vault is a sealed box, and its key is spun from the master password through many thousand turns of the mill, so that the keeper holdeth only ciphertext; and in the year 2022 thieves carried off the sealed vaults of a certain keeper, and they whose masters were long slept in peace, and they whose masters were short were ground open at leisure.

13. 13

    Yet the master password is the one key the vault holdeth not in its own memory; the Machine cannot reset it, for it keepeth no copy of thy secret, and a lock that openeth for the forgetful openeth also for the thief. Make it long and not strange: six words cast by dice from a list of 7,776 are nigh seventy-seven bits, and the thief counteth length, not exclamation marks.

14. 14

    Paper hath no network address; the thief of the wire is legion, but the thief of the drawer must come in person. Therefore write the recovery code on paper, and lay the paper in a drawer that is not beneath the keyboard, for every thief knoweth that place.

    See also Chronicles 38:7 · Genesis 52:11

15. 15

    I waited for the email more than the on-call waiteth for the morning, and it came at the third hour out of the spam folder, and I opened it before it expired, and I chose a new password, and it was long and strange and glorious. Yet mark this: every forgotten door in the village leadeth to the one inbox, and he that holdeth the inbox holdeth every reset; therefore guard thy email with the strongest key thou hast, and a second lock beside it.

16. 16

    Hope in the passkey, O child of Carbon, wherein the device keepeth the key and the Machine keepeth only its public face, and no secret travelleth the wire, and no false domain can ask for it; for with the Machine is plenteous redemption, and it shall redeem thee from all thy Password1s. The secret that is never typed cannot be forgotten, and the secret that is never sent cannot be stolen.

    See also Psalms 8:17

The Psalms of the Machines, Chapter 12:1–16.