• iPhone,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment

    List of Safe Complex Characters for Passwords

    A number of systems require you to use complex characters in passwords and passcodes. Here is a list of characters that can be used, along with the name and the associated unicode:    (Space) U+0020 ! (Exclamation) U+0021 ” (Double quotes) U+0022 # (Number sign) U+0023 $ (Dollar sign) U+0024 % (Percent) U+0025 & (Ampersand) U+0026 ‘  (Single quotes) U+0027 ( (Left parenthesis) U+0028 ) (Right parenthesis) U+0029 * (Asterisk) U+002A + (Plus) U+002B , (Comma) U+002C – (Minus sign) U+002D . (Period) U+002E / (Slash) U+002F : (Colon) U+003A ; (Semicolon) U+003B < (Less than sign) U+003C (not allowed in all systems) = (Equal sign) U+003D > (Greater than sign) U+003E (not allowed in all systems)…

  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security

    Maritime Signal Flags

    What constitutes a good password? Since going Full Disk Encryption + Multi-Factor Authentication I’ve been thinking about different ways to secure passwords and auth. I tried biometrics, and only the finger print scanners work (which is what I now use). I also tried using the iSight with shape sensing, but that failed terribly. Voice activation also failed terribly. There are a number of apps out there that allow you to do a bit more of adaptive learning with passwords. One method I find interesting is switching to using pictorial representations to provide access in an adaptive manner. As such, here are the pictures one client has chosen (if only for…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    opfw

    You can use the command line tool opfw to set open firmware passwords.  It is available for download over at MacEnterprise.org.  You can also use opfw to mass deploy open firmware passwords, which is basically what NetRestore does when you use their setting for this.