Secure password generation...blasphemy!

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Aug 03, 2009 at 08:28:52PM -0600, Modulok wrote:
> I need a way to generate a lot of secure passwords. So, I read all
> about it. Either people are getting way carried away, or I'm missing
> something...

It is very easy to generate hard-to-guess semi-random passwords: 

   openssl rand -base64 6

some examples:

hJ9WQ0eK oOyHWEd4 W801vDIB mob29k5I RVDXkE/9 7BRHC+8h

Even though this is semi-random, these are still extremely hard to
guess, and neither will a dictionary attack be much use. The _big_
downside is that this kind of passwords are hard to remember. So people
_will_ write them down. Which isn't a problem in itself, as long as they
keep that piece of paper secure. (so not taped to their monitor, or
under their keyboard.)

A better solution IMHO is to let people make their own acronyms, mixed
with a little l33tsp34k. That way you can have something easy to
remember, but still hard to guess. E.g. "Ask not for whom the bell
tolls" would become "An4wtbt".

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith                                   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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