Which is why I was careful to say that it was a difference without distinction only in some scenarios. Namely offline attack to a physical device.
In this scenario, even with the attempt restrictions the attacker has a couple of chances of relatively easy guesses, before falling back to the password protection. If we consider shoulder surfing, it’s a lot easier to distinguish a four or six digit PIN than a password.
I aware the PIN doesn’t give actual access to credential and so doesn’t impact online attacks. But that isn’t the only scenario.
Incidentally how much work is “in general” doing when you talk about the access Io Microsoft services granted by the PIN + TPM? It isnt zero access is it.
> how much work is “in general” doing when you talk about the access Io Microsoft services granted by the PIN + TPM?
I mean you can't just go to microsoft.com and log in knowing only my pin on a single device. If you know my PIN for a device, but you don't have the device, you don't have access to my Microsoft account at all.
And if you have all my devices? And what if you have all my external security tokens? And what if you also have all my passwords? And what if you have a complete replica of every thought in my head? And what if what if what if what if...
Sure. Whatever buddy. Nothing is truly secure. If they guessed my password as well along with my device I'd be in an even worse situation. At least my PIN just disappears forever after a few failed attempts and requires that physical device.
Needing a physical device which wipes itself after a few failed attempts is more secure than having a password that could be used anywhere on any device however many times they want to guess.
> without distinction only in some scenarios. Namely offline attack to a physical device.
There is a distinction in this domain though, and it's pretty massive. Offline attacks at guessing passwords, if you fail the PIN a few times (three on most of my machines) the PIN gets cleared never to be used again. Meanwhile you can keep trying the password over and over. The account password on the device isn't getting cleared. So I can make the PIN pretty simple and easy to type in while making my regular password very long and complicated. It doesn't matter if its a pain to type in, because its not like I'm typing it in every time I walk away and come back to my computer.
In this scenario, even with the attempt restrictions the attacker has a couple of chances of relatively easy guesses, before falling back to the password protection. If we consider shoulder surfing, it’s a lot easier to distinguish a four or six digit PIN than a password.
I aware the PIN doesn’t give actual access to credential and so doesn’t impact online attacks. But that isn’t the only scenario.
Incidentally how much work is “in general” doing when you talk about the access Io Microsoft services granted by the PIN + TPM? It isnt zero access is it.