Opinion Is your password PASSWORD? It could be a problem

Is your password something along the lines of Zpg76lMq13qKfy@!? Congratulations. If you’re not used to selecting “strong” passwords and reposing your trust in password managers, things may be a little more confusing. Let’s say you like to use your grandmother’s name. But some sites want you to add numbers — fine, take a date of birth, a few digits of a phone number. Then comes the next level of difficulty: Special characters. Throw in an exclamation mark here, an ampersand there G by this point, grandma’s name looks a bit like a robot’s — and you’re sorted. Until it’s time to remember which of the umpteen permutations and combinations you used for a particular login. Try a few possibilities, hit “forgot password” and wait for the reset link.

In the face of such frustrations, it’s hard not to feel a little sympathy for whoever set the password for the server managing the Louvre museum’s CCTV systems as “LOUVRE”. This was reportedly discovered by a cybersecurity audit in 2014, and has now been highlighted by reports in the wake of last month’s heist. Similarly, software managed by the security company Thales had the password “THALES”. Simple, and easy to remember for the unfortunate human who has to store a 19th-century novel’s worth of passwords in their head.

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It’s not clear if the password was still “LOUVRE” 11 years later, as claimed by some reports. If so, it would have been a suitably comedic detail in a cinematic caper. The heist has sparked serious concerns about gaps in the museum’s security infrastructure, which could take years to plug — some upgrades recommended in 2015 may not be completed until 2032. In the meantime, a reminder: The easiest password to remember is “password”.