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XKCD has an infographic on password security: http://xkcd.com/936/ http://xkcd.com/936/
by CGamesPlay 15y ago
XKCD has an infographic on password security:
http://xkcd.com/936/ http://xkcd.com/936/
- gburt 15y agoThis isn't really true. Its four English words, which is four "choice variables" if you're sampling from an English words character set.
- blahedo 15y agoFour choice variables each with tens of thousands of possibilities, yes, yielding greater entropy at lower cognitive cost.
- sliverstorm 15y agoPut another way, Oxford lists over 250000 words in English. There are 26 letters. So we have: 250000^4 = 4 x 10^21 combinations vs 26^(~10 characters) = ~10^14 combinations Even counting for capitolization and numbers and symbols, you get something like: 72^(~10) = 4 x 10^18
- Tichy 15y agoExcept that nobody will use the full range of the Oxford dictionary.
- sliverstorm 15y agoYeah, well, even if you use 1/8 of the Oxford dictionary you're still around parity with a 10-symbol password using lower case, capitols, symbols and numbers. At which point we fall back to Randall's observation- one is a whole hell of a lot easier to remember than the other.
- kragen 15y agoThe comic actually had a mouseover punch line about people like you: > To anyone who understands information theory and security and is in an infuriating argument with someone who does not (possibly involving mixed case), I sincerely apologize. You are the "someone who does not". Please do the calculations described in the comic and tell us what your results are.