How to make super-strong, easy to remember passwords

Y

Yousuf Khan

I found this article and its calculator quite the revelation. One thing
that prevents most people from making super-strong passwords is that it
would be hard to remember them. So what if they weren't hard to
remember? To summarize this article, it just says don't worry about
making your password complex, just make it long. Just the length alone
would be enough to defeat the world's fastest supercomputers, in both
brute force attacks and dictionary attacks. What they're saying is don't
make the needle in the haystack harder to find, just make the haystack
bigger. Every additional digit you put into the password, makes it
exponentially harder to guess, to the point where you could even create
an easily memorable password that would take longer than the entire age
of the universe to crack!

GRC's | Password Haystacks: How Well Hidden is Your Needle?
https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

Yousuf Khan
 
A

Antares 531

I found this article and its calculator quite the revelation. One thing
that prevents most people from making super-strong passwords is that it
would be hard to remember them. So what if they weren't hard to
remember? To summarize this article, it just says don't worry about
making your password complex, just make it long. Just the length alone
would be enough to defeat the world's fastest supercomputers, in both
brute force attacks and dictionary attacks. What they're saying is don't
make the needle in the haystack harder to find, just make the haystack
bigger. Every additional digit you put into the password, makes it
exponentially harder to guess, to the point where you could even create
an easily memorable password that would take longer than the entire age
of the universe to crack!

GRC's | Password Haystacks: How Well Hidden is Your Needle?
https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

Yousuf Khan
Some good information, here. The method I have used for a long time is
to pick a favorite song book and a well known song from this book.
Then use the first letters of the main verse, along with the page
number and song number. This is very easy to remember and it think it
would be hard for anyone to crack.

I keep the song book concealed in another room where an intruder would
not likely find it.

Gordon
 
G

Gene E. Bloch

I found this article and its calculator quite the revelation. One thing
that prevents most people from making super-strong passwords is that it
would be hard to remember them. So what if they weren't hard to
remember? To summarize this article, it just says don't worry about
making your password complex, just make it long. Just the length alone
would be enough to defeat the world's fastest supercomputers, in both
brute force attacks and dictionary attacks. What they're saying is don't
make the needle in the haystack harder to find, just make the haystack
bigger. Every additional digit you put into the password, makes it
exponentially harder to guess, to the point where you could even create
an easily memorable password that would take longer than the entire age
of the universe to crack!

GRC's | Password Haystacks: How Well Hidden is Your Needle?
https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

Yousuf Khan
I have always enjoyed Steve Gibson's web site. Lots of ideas and a fun
style. For those not familiar with him, I recommend taking a look
starting at his home page:

https://www.grc.com

I don't necessarily follow all of his ideas :)

Playing with the page Yousuf points to gives some *very* interesting
numbers.
 
D

Dave \Crash\ Dummy

Gene said:
I have always enjoyed Steve Gibson's web site. Lots of ideas and a
fun style. For those not familiar with him, I recommend taking a look
starting at his home page:

https://www.grc.com

I don't necessarily follow all of his ideas :)

Playing with the page Yousuf points to gives some *very* interesting
numbers.
I like the GRC hosted newsgroups.
 
J

Joe from NY

Playing with the page Yousuf points to gives some *very* interesting
numbers.
I agree wholeheartedly. In a very short time I learned a lot about making
passwords that are easy to remember but nearly impossible to crack. I loves
me some learning!
 
Y

Yousuf Khan

I found this article and its calculator quite the revelation. One thing
that prevents most people from making super-strong passwords is that it
would be hard to remember them. So what if they weren't hard to
remember? To summarize this article, it just says don't worry about
making your password complex, just make it long. Just the length alone
would be enough to defeat the world's fastest supercomputers, in both
brute force attacks and dictionary attacks. What they're saying is don't
make the needle in the haystack harder to find, just make the haystack
bigger. Every additional digit you put into the password, makes it
exponentially harder to guess, to the point where you could even create
an easily memorable password that would take longer than the entire age
of the universe to crack!

GRC's | Password Haystacks: How Well Hidden is Your Needle?
https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

Yousuf Khan
Some more:

xkcd: Password Strength
http://xkcd.com/936/

Yousuf Khan
 

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