I searched and didn't find a thread dedicated to passwords. So consider this a Public Service Announcement.
A password is your final line of defense in computer security. I hear complaints a lot about how hard it is to remember passwords. Especially when you have to change them often. So typically people choose bad passwords because they are easy to remember. Here are the basics on making a memorable, strong password.
As an example, it's nearly October, so Halloween is right around the corner for us in the U.S. Users will be tempted (if forced to change their passwords around this time of year) to use something like "Halloween", which is a very bad password. "halloween31" is also a bad password. "H@110w33n" is a slightly less-bad password.
Any words that appear in a dictionary make cracking a password that much easier. This includes "foreign" dictionaries. These dictionaries are all readily accessible and can be used as proofs in cracking programs at applied against your password. Adding numbers to dictionary words doesn't increase the password's strength worth a wit. Even with trivial character replacements like capital letters and non-alphanumeric symbols, you're not getting a strong password.
Trust me, if you've thought of it, so have "they".
A true strong password should consist of 8 or more characters and be part of a "passphrase". A passphrase consists of a phrase that has special meaning to you, therefore making it easier to remember. For this example, I will choose:
Homer Simpson for President. I am serious!
One simple approach to create a better password is to take the first letter of each word in your passphrase, giving you:
hsfpias
That looks seemingly random, and it's a fairly hard password to crack, but it's too short. Only 7 characters. Why not make it harder by using the punctuation from the sentence?
hsfp.ias!
Now that is a much harder password to crack. Why stop there? But let's step it up a bit more by capitalizing some letters and adding some numbers, say, the year we need to vote Homer in:
HSfp.ias!04
Voila, a truly difficult password to crack, but is pretty still easy to remember. Feel free to liberally salt it with non-alphanumeric character replacements for greater difficulty (but a bit of "unwieldiness"). For example, replacing an "a" with a "@", and/or a "s" with a "$", leaving us with:
HSfp.i@$!04
A password cracker will give up and move onto greener pastures (read: more easily broken passwords) long before this one is cracked.
I hope this helps you choose a better password for yourself.
How to create a strong password.
A password is your final line of defense in computer security. I hear complaints a lot about how hard it is to remember passwords. Especially when you have to change them often. So typically people choose bad passwords because they are easy to remember. Here are the basics on making a memorable, strong password.
As an example, it's nearly October, so Halloween is right around the corner for us in the U.S. Users will be tempted (if forced to change their passwords around this time of year) to use something like "Halloween", which is a very bad password. "halloween31" is also a bad password. "H@110w33n" is a slightly less-bad password.
Any words that appear in a dictionary make cracking a password that much easier. This includes "foreign" dictionaries. These dictionaries are all readily accessible and can be used as proofs in cracking programs at applied against your password. Adding numbers to dictionary words doesn't increase the password's strength worth a wit. Even with trivial character replacements like capital letters and non-alphanumeric symbols, you're not getting a strong password.
Trust me, if you've thought of it, so have "they".
A true strong password should consist of 8 or more characters and be part of a "passphrase". A passphrase consists of a phrase that has special meaning to you, therefore making it easier to remember. For this example, I will choose:
Homer Simpson for President. I am serious!
One simple approach to create a better password is to take the first letter of each word in your passphrase, giving you:
hsfpias
That looks seemingly random, and it's a fairly hard password to crack, but it's too short. Only 7 characters. Why not make it harder by using the punctuation from the sentence?
hsfp.ias!
Now that is a much harder password to crack. Why stop there? But let's step it up a bit more by capitalizing some letters and adding some numbers, say, the year we need to vote Homer in:
HSfp.ias!04
Voila, a truly difficult password to crack, but is pretty still easy to remember. Feel free to liberally salt it with non-alphanumeric character replacements for greater difficulty (but a bit of "unwieldiness"). For example, replacing an "a" with a "@", and/or a "s" with a "$", leaving us with:
HSfp.i@$!04
A password cracker will give up and move onto greener pastures (read: more easily broken passwords) long before this one is cracked.
I hope this helps you choose a better password for yourself.
