Smartcard PIN may be shorter than passphrase?

[Werner Koch]

On Tue, 23 Aug 2011 15:12, david at systemoverlord.com said:
> Would it be reasonable to say that you may use a significantly smaller
> PIN for your smartcard than would be required of a passphrase, since
> the smartcard locks itself after 3 tries?

Yes.  It is up to 6 tries because an attacker may also try to open the
card using the admin PIN.

> Since I don't use a reader with a pinpad, I must type my PIN in, and
> thus have about 8 alpha-numeric characters for my regular PIN.  (The

Better use only digits - if you need to use a keypad you can't do that
instantly.


Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


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