To the right you will notice a series of monsters.

They all have something in common.

Can you guess what it is?

They represent the various email addresses that I've used on a regular basis over the last decade using a new authentication / anti-spoofing technique called MonsterID that has been implemented in a number of programming languages to make it easy to adopt.

The idea is pretty simple.

If you're presented with a login form and you know what certain input should generate graphically then it's hard for a fake site to spoof that input (for instance you enter your userid and as well as your password you then have to select the correct critter from a page of randomly generated ones. Obviously to make a site secure the seeding and images would have to be unique to that site to avoid simple spoofing from the common set of images.

The system can also be used to automatically generate cute alternative icons for a system such as Gravatar. In that case a common consistent set of images would be handy to help you recognize "friends" across different networks.

It looks like the latter form of MonsterID may well make it into my new blog platform of choice which will certainly liven the themes up a little.

The folks behind BlogEngine.net are certainly taking securing the platform against robot form fillers, comment and trackback spammers quite seriously and if MonsterIDs somehow add another level of protection I'll be glad to see them make an appearance in an upcoming release ;)