6 ms·
This is a nitpick and not pertinent to anything, but base64 encoding your password could make it stronger. Password strength is not just about entropy, high ent
by tinco 3y ago
This is a nitpick and not pertinent to anything, but base64 encoding your password could make it stronger. Password strength is not just about entropy, high entropy is simply the most effective way of making your password stronger. If your password is 100% randomly generated (as it should be) then base64 encoding it won't do anything.
If however your password is engineered to be easier to remember, for example by using dictionaries or some kind of scheme that has a lower entropy, then the base64 encoding step adds a single bit of strength to your password. Meaning anyone who is brute forcing your password using a smart password cracker, has to configure that cracker to also consider base64 encoding as a scheme, basically forcing it to perform a single extra operation for every try.
Anyway, useless information, you shouldn't be using password schemes like that. The horse shoe battery staple type password style should be quite sufficient I think.
- franky47 3y agoOne could argue that base64 having a shorter output length than its input would weaken any given password, assuming a brute force attack (not a dictionary one).
- LelouBil 3y agoBase64 turns 6 bits to a ASCII character (8 bits), I don't think it's possible to have a shorter output length.
- franky47 3y agoDamn, indeed, my bad. In my defense, I just had a new baby and didn't sleep much last night..
- iambateman 3y agoCongrats on the baby!
- cortesoft 3y agoMy brain never recovered from having kids. Good luck.
- LinuxBender 3y agoAdding to this here [1] is a chart that shows how several encodings affect size ratios of utf-8, 16 and 32. Of course that gets into the discussions [2][3] of using utf in passwords and I have no idea how many password schemes support this beyond what I use. [1] - https://github.com/qntm/base2048 https://github.com/qntm/base2048 [2] - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/85663/is-it-a-good-idea-to-use-non-latin-unicode-characters-in-a-password https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/85663/is-it-a-g... [3] - https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4943/will-using-unicode-chars-in-my-password-increase-security https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4943/will-using...
- luismedel 3y agoSorry, but it's the opposite. A base64-encoded string will be ~30% longer than the original string.
- giancarlostoro 3y ago> Anyway, useless information, you shouldn't be using password schemes like that. The horse shoe battery staple type password style should be quite sufficient I think. I wonder if its better to make an encoder that uses words and the output looks like "horse shoe battery staple" except you don't release your dictionary list of potential words output by the encoder, but then you guarantee that you can always re-create a password if you lose it, assuming you don't lose the dictionary file.
- starttoaster 3y agoI feel like we're discussing the 24 word mnemonic private keys used by crypto wallets with extra steps.