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You can register an Emergency Email Address or a Challenge/Response with the
password change database for future use. Of course you will need to prove you
have a valid password to register or change these rescue mechanisms, so if you
don't register one or both before you forget your password, you're out
of luck. So do it now, before you need it.
To register your Emergency Email Address for Challenge/Response, on the top
of any ACCC Web page, including the home page (http://www.accc.uic.edu)
and this one:
Click Accounts ->
Click Here before you forget your password.
To use them, on the top of any ACCC Web page, including this one:
Click Accounts ->
Help! I've forgotten my password!
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- How Does Emergency Email Work?
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On the Help! I've forgotten my Password! Web page, your type your netid
in the box in the Or Use Emergency Email section and click the Send
Rescue Info... button. Then we will send a special secret and a URL
to your emergency address. You go to that URL and cut-and-paste the secret
from the note (without any blanks at the beginning or the end) into the
Web page and click Submit Secret. If the secret matches, you will
be transferred to the ACCC password changing utility and you can change
your ACCC password.
- How Secure is Emergency Email?
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Really, it's up to you. Don't give us an address that you consider insecure.
And do be sure you can read the email without using the ACCC password
you might forget. Don't tell other people about the account, don't tell
them it's your Emergency Email account, and don't use an easily guessable
password for it.
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- How Does Challenge and Response Work?
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On the Help! I've forgotten my Password! Web page, your type your netid
the box in the Use Challenge/Response section, and click Change my
Password.... In the next screen we give you your challenge question
and a box for you to type your response reply and two boxes to type and
retype your new password. Fill in all the boxes and click the Change
Password Using Challenge Response button.
Be sure to pick a Good, Secure Response Phrase. It should be
easy for you to remember, but hard for anyone else to guess, even for
someone who knows you.
- How About an Example?
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Challenge:
What book did I drop into Fred's swimming pool?
And response:
A Tale of Two Cities
This is a good response -- it would be easy to remember and hard to guess,
unless the all your friends where there when you dropped the book into
Fred's pool or it's your favorite late summer remembrance story. There
are lots of books and it's unlikely that anyone would guess the name.
It would probably be better if it were misspelled in some way that you
could remember.
- How Secure is my Challenge/Response?
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Anyone on the Internet can find out your Challenge phrase.
And that same anyone can then make many guesses at your Response. We have
to give out the Challenge phrase, not knowing who you are, because if we
knew who you really are (i.e. if you still had your password), you wouldn't
need our help changing your password! Thus, a Challenge like What
is my spouse's name? is not very secure. (Unless, of course, the
recorded response has nothing to do with your spouse's name! However, you'd
better be sure you can remember your Response a year from now.) Also, a
Challenge like What is my favorite color? is also not secure,
even if no one knows your favorite color is red. Why? Because
there aren't all that many colors to guess.
- What Else?
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The Response will be recorded as you type it. You must not forget
your Response, or this service is useless. By all means, use oddball punctuation
if you can remember it, because this makes it much harder to guess. However,
we will squeeze out multiple spaces between words, because it's too hard
to remember them.
- How Should I Pick a Challenge/Response?
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Carefully. You can use up to 250 characters in the Challenge,
and 250 characters in the Response; the minimum is 15 characters for each.
Using lots of characters helps keep the Response secure, so use a full phrase
or sentence, perhaps with oddball punctuation. Pick the Challenge so it
will easily remind you, but no one else, of what your Response is.
- What if I have further questions?
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Send questions or comments to www@uic.edu
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