Windows 8 picture passwords: are they safe?

As a general rule of thumb, each new version of Windows becomes more hardened in terms of security, and Windows 8 is no exception. There's the overhauled Windows Defender, as well as a whole raft of security measures 'under the hood' such as the Secure Boot feature which helps protect the device from rootkit attack by only allowing trusted software to execute during the boot process, and the addition of randomisation to the memory management function to make the writing of exploit code that bit harder. But Windows 8 offers another intriguing security function: picture passwords. Here, we look at what they are, how they work and, most importantly, whether they actually any more secure than a traditional character-based password.