Assuming you haven’t got all your passwords stored in some kind of manager, when you do have to type in a pesky passphrase, how do you know you’ve got it right?

Chroma-Hash to the rescue. Still in an experimental stage, it’s a jQuery plugin which would allow a web site to display a series of colors for any run of characters the user types in, based on the MD5 system.

Mattt, a hacker from Pittsburgh, explains the system, including security concerns and possible improvements for future versions.

The system would only be really useful if it were implemented consistently across various sites that required passwords, but nevertheless it’s an interesting use of visualisation in order to make one aspect of data entry easier.

Now, if it could be implemented as a client-side plugin, such as a browser add-on, that would be cool.