Want to block common passwords? Sorry, it's patented.

According to Western statistics two years ago, 4.7% of users choose the word “password” as their password, 8.5% - “password” or “123456”, the 10 most popular passwords cover 14% of the entire user base (40% are top 100 , 79% - the top 500, 91% - the top 1000).

When creating a site, it would be quite logical to make a list of commonly used passwords and prohibit them during user registration. It would seem a logical idea, but ... unfortunately, the authentication process in IT is covered by many patents, writes IT security consultant Mark Burnett. They describe the most obvious, well-known and everyday technology. It seems that absolutely all possible aspects of choosing a password, authentication process, storage and recovery of information are protected by one or several patents.

• Access control system to a secure system by checking
• Specifying a set of restricted passwords
• Prevent trivial character combinations
• Password strength check method and apparatus
• Method and system of proactive password validation
• Method, system and storage medium for determining trivial combinations of characters in the proposed passwords
• Apparatus and method for determining password quality and diversity

And this is only one aspect of the use of passwords, and in fact there are still recovering forgotten passwords , secure password resetting , using one-time passwords , blocking an account , generating spoken passwords , password hints, and even backup passwords (backdoors from the manufacturer) . In general, lawyers may even say that this patent describes the essence of the password itself, except for the prior art in art, namely, in the fairy tale about Ali Babu (“Open Sesame”).
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In general, it is surprising how deft entrepreneurs managed to register such a large number of patents on this topic. Probably they should not have been issued at all. It is also good if they belong to large corporations like IBM, which certainly will not sue every small company. But what if patent trolls take over?

This is a good example of how patents directly damage the information security of computer systems, and therefore all users.