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Nick and Margaret: The Trouble with Our Trains is a BBC Two show featuring Nick Hewer and Margaret Mountford, who explore "the sorry state of the British rail network."
The dynamic duo's travels took them to the Wessex Integrated Control Centre, located above the platform entrances at London Waterloo railway station, manned 24 hours a day by teams of controllers from both South West Trains and Network Rail.
[The] documentary revealed more than it planned this week, exposing the passwords used at a rail control centre.
The article features a frame of the video which shows the complex login credentials taped to an LCD panel of a Windows XP terminal.
One might wonder if overstrict password policy brought this about, except obviously a strict password policy would not allow the password that is stickied to the monitor..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wisnoskij on Monday May 04 2015, @11:18PM
A password taped to a monitor is still a hell of a lot better than "123".
(Score: 4, Informative) by SrLnclt on Monday May 04 2015, @11:26PM
Not by much... for those who haven't RTFA the password in question (taped to the monitor) is Password3.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:24AM
That's the password on my luggage.
(Score: 5, Funny) by BK on Tuesday May 05 2015, @02:42AM
They changed it to Password4 after the show.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Tuesday May 05 2015, @01:47PM
Hah! Hah! Hah!....wait...
It is a powerful illustration of the sorry state of things when your comment needs to be modded +1 Funny, +1 Informative, and +1 Insightful all at the same time, and yet only YOU('BK') know if you meant it as a joke, or was serious.
So, hedging my bets, I tasted vomit as I laughed. *sigh*
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 05 2015, @08:29PM
That would be too obvious. They went straight to 5. They're not stupid.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday May 05 2015, @07:49PM
Actually, it's a LOT better. You can (normally) only read the password taped to the monitor from within the room that the monitor is in. Sometimes that's all the improvement that's needed.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 05 2015, @12:00AM
It depends on how many and how has access to look at that monitor and whether that system is tied to the internet.
But I think we can all agree that sticky-note passwords AND simpleton passwords AND overzealous complexity rules are bad.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Touché) by Nuke on Tuesday May 05 2015, @08:39AM
nitehawk214 wrote :- "It depends on how many and how has access to look at that monitor"
It was looked at by a TV audience - just a few hundred thousand?