From MFA to biometrics , the humble password could soon be a thing of the past . Cyber Magazine looks at the past , present , and future of passwordless technology
TIMELINE
A WORLD WITHOUT PASSWORDS : THE RISE OF PASSWORDLESS TECH
From MFA to biometrics , the humble password could soon be a thing of the past . Cyber Magazine looks at the past , present , and future of passwordless technology
1960s 1980s
Origin of the password
The origin of the password arrived in the mid-1960s at MIT with the development of the Compatible Time-Sharing System . It allowed hundreds of users to share the computer with a common mainframe . The password was developed as an accounting tool to allow users access to their specific resources for a certain amount of time .
One-time passwords
The first version of ‘ passwordless ’ authentication arrived in the 1980s in the form of dynamic , one-time passwords ( OTP ) held on physical fobs . OTPs would eventually develop into two protocols : time-based OTPs ( TOTP ) and cryptographed hash-based message authentication codes , or HMAC OTPs . Dynamic OTPs are still widely used as an authentication protocol .
16 March 2023