5 ms·

"Pretty much anything that can be remembered can be cracked." Randomly choose 6 words from a 10k English dictionary and you're set. Hell, make it 12 words. Sti

"Pretty much anything that can be remembered can be cracked." Randomly choose 6 words from a 10k English dictionary and you're set. Hell, make it 12 words. Still insanely easier to remember than a 12 character alphanumeric/symbol password, and much more difficult to crack.

scott00 9y ago
I'm partial to using a very broad dictionary: http://app.aspell.net/create?max_size=35&spelling=US&max_variant=0&diacritic=strip&special=hacker&special=roman-numerals&download=wordlist&encoding=utf-8&format=inline http://app.aspell.net/create?max_size=35&spelling=US&max_var.... It has 50,105 words. Gets you an extra 2.3 bits per word.
Bromskloss 9y ago
I realised after choosing random words that gets annoyingly long to type. In that regard, random characters are better.
SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
Better yet, use the EFF's Diceware list. It's easy to pick randomly from the list (just roll some dice) and the resulting passphrase won't have some of the issues a dictonary chosen one would have, like compound words causing entropy reductions. (EG if fire, truck, and firetruck are included in the dictionary as 3 separate words and you happen to get fire and truck in sequence as part of your passphrase the entropy of those two words is equivalent to the entropy of a single word! Not good.)
- dheera 9y ago
  > if fire, truck, and firetruck are included in the dictionary as 3 separate words and you happen to get fire and truck in sequence as part of your passphrase the entropy of those two words is equivalent to the entropy of a single word Not exactly true if they are separate words. In a word-based password scheme, you are treating entire words, not characters, as units. The chance of fire, truck, and firetruck appearing in one password in that sequence, given a 10K word dictionary, is 1/(10K^3). The miniscule possibility of this speaks to the fact that there actually is a large entropy.

scott00 9y ago

I'm partial to using a very broad dictionary: http://app.aspell.net/create?max_size=35&spelling=US&max_variant=0&diacritic=strip&special=hacker&special=roman-numerals&download=wordlist&encoding=utf-8&format=inline http://app.aspell.net/create?max_size=35&spelling=US&max_var.... It has 50,105 words. Gets you an extra 2.3 bits per word.

Bromskloss 9y ago

I realised after choosing random words that gets annoyingly long to type. In that regard, random characters are better.

SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago

Better yet, use the EFF's Diceware list. It's easy to pick randomly from the list (just roll some dice) and the resulting passphrase won't have some of the issues a dictonary chosen one would have, like compound words causing entropy reductions. (EG if fire, truck, and firetruck are included in the dictionary as 3 separate words and you happen to get fire and truck in sequence as part of your passphrase the entropy of those two words is equivalent to the entropy of a single word! Not good.)

dheera 9y ago
> if fire, truck, and firetruck are included in the dictionary as 3 separate words and you happen to get fire and truck in sequence as part of your passphrase the entropy of those two words is equivalent to the entropy of a single word Not exactly true if they are separate words. In a word-based password scheme, you are treating entire words, not characters, as units. The chance of fire, truck, and firetruck appearing in one password in that sequence, given a 10K word dictionary, is 1/(10K^3). The miniscule possibility of this speaks to the fact that there actually is a large entropy.