Comments on: Stronger passwords now available

By: billbo

billbo — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 22:07:27 +0000

A neat idea, but the downside is once one password is cracked the others are easy to guess.

By: Neil_A

Neil_A — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 12:05:09 +0000

One of the things I've been recommended before is 'wrapping'. That is taking the name of the site you are on and splitting it around your 'usual' password to create a unique password for every site you go to.

Example:
Lets say my normal password was Pa55w0rd
When I got to Hotmail I would use HotPa55w0rdMail
Ebay would be EPa55w0rdBay

And so on...

By: billbo

billbo — Thu, 31 May 2007 21:29:51 +0000

Excellent post.

And I thought "Pa55word" was clever

By: PMSA

PMSA — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:56:33 +0000

Ian

I know that a lot of users find it difficult to create a password which is both strong (more than 8 characters including both upper and lower case letters and numerics) and also memorable.

I read about this method on one of the security websites and it might be worth publishing it on the help pages when users are asked to select an initial password.

Think of an easily remembered phrase with a minimum of 8 words or numerics (preferably more than 10) which is relevant to you, e.g.

Number 1 "Ian Wild has worked at Plus Net since 2003", or No2 "Ian and Jean moved to Sheffield in 2005".

Now take the initial letter of each word and the digit as applicable:

so No 1 becomes "IWhwaPNs2003" I could then randomise it further by putting the 20 (or the 03) at the beginning:

20IWhwaPNs03 seemingly a totally random mix of Upper and lower case letters and digits of more than 8 characters.

No 2 becomes "IaJmtSi2005" or 20IaJmtSi05

Users can think of any number of ways of creating these e.g.

"Ian Wild's daughters are Anne age 4 and Dorothy aged 7" becomes IWdaAa4aDa7

"My first car was a Triumph Acclaim in 1993" becomes 19MfcwaTAi93

To make it even stronger you can add punctuation like the full stop or exclamation mark.

Hope this is useful.