Impossible password requirements

Jul 5, 2023 • Yousef Amar • 1 min read

Recently, there was this password game trending (and was also on the front page of HN). It goes quite deep, and I really like the variety of the challenges. I ragequit after my chicken died of overfeeding (you'll know what I mean when you reach it), especially because the game is different every time you play it, so you can't just copy-paste, but have to restart from scratch.

Anyway, coincidentally, as I was sorting through some old bookmarks, I came across this link: https://www.troyhunt.com/partnerships/. I was really confused as to why I bookmarked this. The automatic summariser summary was very innocuous.

troyhunt.com seeks partnerships for cross-platform solutions and value-added web services. To start the process, an account must be created.

Troy Hunt is the guy who made "Have I Been Pwned". My confusion ended once I actually tried to make an account. I remembered that he made this page to send scammers to and have them waste time trying to satiate impossible password requirements!

I mentioned many times that I like these sort of puzzles (and I still need to write about my own various attempts at similar ones), but some of these password ones are really quite clever and a great inspiration!