Apple launches open source password program

Making unique password generation work

Creating unique passwords is one of the basic tenets of web security – yet every site seemingly has different rules. Apple is hoping to make things simpler by creating an open source project for developers that should make it easier to bake website rules into apps. Apple says its Password Manager Resources project “allows [developers] to integrate website-specific requirements used by the iCloud Keychain password manager to generate strong, unique passwords. The project also contains collections of websites known to share a sign-in system, links to websites’ pages where users change passwords, and more.”

Apps such as 1Password, LastPass and DashLane already make creating passwords fairly pain-free, but often their ‘recipes’ don’t tally with specific website requirements – 1Password, for example, enables you to adjust the length, number of digits and number of symbols contained in a password, but some sites won’t accept symbols, say, while others limit the maximum or minimum password length, and it’s not necessarily obvious what the rules are – until you fall foul of them. Hopefully, Apple’s project will help make website logins easier to navigate, since your password manager will understand what the rules are for each site and help you create passwords that work first time, every time.

Password managers such as 1Password try to make creating unique logins easier – although they’re not always foolproof.