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Bob works at a high security institution.

One day Bob tried to log into his computer and his password was denied. Then remembered that, for security reasons, the passwords were reset every month. So he called his boss for his new password.

Bob said,

Boss, my old password is out of date.

The boss replied,

Yes, it is. The new password is different, but if you pay attention you will be able to figure out the new one. Your new password has the same amount of letters as the old one, and four of the letters are the same.

Bob was then able to log into his computer without any problem.

What was Bob's new password? What was Bob's old password?

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    $\begingroup$ This question has gathered a large amount of views! Curiosity made me wonder why. Turns out this is the number one result on Google for an out of date password. :) $\endgroup$
    – ITAdminNC
    Commented Feb 23, 2015 at 18:29
  • $\begingroup$ hahahahahahahahaaa - that is hilarious! $\endgroup$
    – bgmCoder
    Commented Feb 23, 2015 at 20:14

1 Answer 1

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Answer:

New:

"different" is the new password

Old:

"outofdate" is the old password

How:

Both passwords are the same length. Both passwords contain the characters D, E, N and T, totaling four unique letters that are the same.

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  • $\begingroup$ I would have said that the new password has the same amount of letters as "the old one", with D, E, N, T being the unique matching letters, but I guess it works either way. $\endgroup$
    – Hellion
    Commented Feb 23, 2015 at 21:32
  • $\begingroup$ Good catch, I changed it. You're right, they're both valid answers, but this brain teaser has been around so long I over analyzed the explanation. Another fact is we can't tell from the way it's written if there's actually a space in the password. Although unlikely compared to most strict guidelines, if the password contained a space it would be surely saved in the encrypted form, so it would count as a character. Brain on overload now, gotta stop and go back to work. $\endgroup$
    – ITAdminNC
    Commented Feb 23, 2015 at 21:50
  • $\begingroup$ You could say those four characters were iDENTical! $\endgroup$
    – user88
    Commented Feb 24, 2015 at 7:20

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