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Synopsis: Lay open a complicated password scheme for public scrutiny.
Sometimes, you may think you have come up with a really clever password or security scheme, however, you haven't. Thus, flaws in your scheme may go unnoticed until you or a cracker recognizes them. Public exposure may help fix the flaws before they become a problem.
Therefore, lay open a complicated password scheme and expose it to public scrutiny. You should do this only with password schemes that can benefit from public exposure. If the whole trick of a password scheme is an ingenious idea that by publishing it reduces the password scheme's value, Keep It Secret.
Open source implementations of encryption algorithms, published research papers on algorithms and flaws thereof, and even this pattern language are examples of Lay It Open.
Previous pattern: Stay Current And Ahead
Next pattern: Keep It Secret
Contributors: Dirk Riehle
How much of the scheme should I make public? I think some of the patterns downstream in the language may be able to help the language user make choices about what should and shouldn't be laid out in the open. -- EugeneWallingford
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