Update 2: Actually, it looks as though the password hash feature is, in fact, random and not just a security measure. It’s purpose seems to be to break GMail utilities. The exact nature and effect remains to be seen. Several utilities that I use are still functioning fine.

Update: The sky has not fallen. The end is not yet near. Apparently, the graphical word hash is a security feature that you see when you type your password incorrectly several times.

I have not seen this on the servers I log-in to but Fluffy Panda reported on the GTray discussion list:

Gmail has just implemented a new login mechanism, apparantly directly aimed at preventing automatic logins. Now you need to read a deformed word and type it in before you can log on.

The deformation doesn’t look too bad and I think I might bbe able to write some OCR software that can read it 80% of the time but since it’s a new feeature and likely to be changed again fairly quickly I think I’ll wait and see for now.

If the people on this list would email google and let them know that the new login mechanism is A Bad Thing ™ then maybe they’ll just take it away all by themselves.

Very interesting indeed.

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