Dear Colleagues, The RIPE NCC recently announced completion of an action point from the RIPE Database Working Group to hide the password hashes in MNTNER objects from public view. As a follow up to that, we agreed to contact all maintainers and advise them to update their passwords. This was also completed last week. At RIPE 64 we will provide some statistics on the outcome of that advice. The next issue that was raised in the Database Working group session at RIPE 63 was the use of plain text passwords in emails to update data in the RIPE Database. The RIPE NCC would like to invite members of the community to put forward and discuss ideas on resolving this matter. Note that there are now many ways to update objects in the RIPE Database. As well as the traditional email service, there is also Webupdates for single or small numbers of objects to be updated. For scripting of automated updates, there are Syncupdates and the RESTful API. Some ideas that have been suggested during discussions in the past are to disallow the use of passwords in email updates and also the option to drop email updates completely. There may also be other options. As usual, the RIPE NCC will follow any discussions and provide technical input where necessary. Regards, Denis Walker Business Analyst RIPE NCC Database Group