Password / / Martin Paul Eve.

• Superior document: Object lessons : a book series about the hidden lives of ordinary things
• VerfasserIn: Eve, Martin Paul, 1986-
• Place / Publishing House: London, England : : Bloomsbury Academic,, 2020.; London, England : : Bloomsbury Publishing,, 2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Object lessons.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (126 pages) :; illustrations, graphs.
• Notes: Includes index.

"Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Where does a password end and an identity begin? A person might be more than his chosen ten-character combination, but does a bank know that? Or an email provider? What's an 'identity theft' in the digital age if not the unauthorized use of a password? In untangling the histories, cultural contexts and philosophies of the password, Martin Paul Eve explores how 'what we know' became 'who we are', revealing how the modern notion of identity has been shaped by the password. Ranging from ancient Rome and the 'watchwords' of military encampments, through the three-factor authentication systems of Harry Potter and up to the biometric scanner in the iPhone, Password makes a timely and important contribution to our understanding of the words, phrases and special characters that determine our belonging and, often, our being. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic."-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Intro; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Introduction: Passwords and their limits; Chapter 1 Who Goes There? : Militaries, Mortality and Passwords; Passwords, militaries and classical civilizations; Enigma: Complexity, calculation, making and breaking; Disclosure, militaries and the law; Chapter 2 Special Characters: Passwords in Literature and Religion; Passwords, myth and magic; Harry Potter and the two-factor authentication device; The Word; Chapter 3 P455w0rd5 and the Digital Era; Cryptographic hash functions; Fearful asymmetry; Biometrics; Chapter 4 Identity.