It has become a dangerous fad to talk about biometrics as a replacement for the traditional authentication methods. It is often claimed that passwords are losing battle to biometrics… Despite the futility of the claim, I don't even need to dismiss it. There is one simple physical fact that renders this entire «battle» completely impossible.
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Once again I have to return to the topic of strict antagonism between the authentication and the identification, meaning these very processes and the tokens involved as well. Before I indulge into boring you with tedious decomposition of entities you used to perceive as atomic, I present you a synthetic illustration of the difference in question. A bad guy tries to get a false-negative outcome of identification, and a false-positive outcome of authentication. This is not explanatory, yet very indicative, I hope it gives you an idea of the magnitude of the difference, and we are going to dig into this now.
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Simple questions are usually the most difficult ones to answer. And the most important among them are traditionally labeled stupid and dismissed. The modern days InfoSec is based upon unanswered questions. The lack of theoretical basis allows InfoSec gurus to produce teachings and «best practices» without a limit.

Today I want to address two very basic questions about passwords:

What are characteristic properties of a password? and what makes your password yours?

By answering these questions you achieve understanding of the utter malevolence of the password abandonment movements, that are so frighteningly popular today. There is a particularly dangerous movement to replace passwords with bio-metric attributes that can reliably identify your body (e.g. voice, fingerprints, and such). Although these attributes are successfully used in forensic practice for centuries, it does not make them good authentication tokens. Why? Because your password's job is NOT to identify your body.

I hear you screaming: «WHAT?!?!?!» That means you are ready to investigate what IS a password, what is its job, and what properties do you want your password to possess.
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