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Title: Advice for constructing secure passwords. Post by: mobaholic on September 30, 2009, 10:31:24 AM Secure Passwords "Another reader asks: So many programs and Web sites require me to have complex passwords. I feel like I have to write them down to remember them, but that doesn't seem safe either. Is there any way to make a complex password I won't forget? That is a great question! It does seem like password requirements get more and more difficult to meet as the need for better security continues to climb in the computer world. Most Web sites these days require you to have a password with at least eight characters, while one of those characters must be a number or a symbol and there must be at least one capital letter. Gee whiz! Although there are a lot of requirements to meet, I am going to add a few more suggestions for you. In order for a password to be truly secure, there should be no words of any kind in the password. It shouldn't simply be a word with a number at the end and you shouldn't just capitalize the first letter of the password. If you do, your password could be cracked within seconds! So, you ask, How in the world can I come up with a password I can remember with all of these requirements? Well, there is a very good way to do this! It will allow you to come up with a password that is easy to remember and you can even write down a hint, without giving the password away on paper. Are you interested? Then here's how to do it! First, come up with a word. It can be something like a pet's name, a city or anything else you want to use. For my example, I will use my hometown of Toledo. Second, find some characters you can use to replace some of the letters. I will replace o with 0 and L with 1. So, now I have T01ed0. Third, since Toledo is only six characters, I will need to add some more characters. I will add "AB." This makes my password T01ed0AB. Now, this is a secure password, but it may be kind of hard to remember. So, to help you remember your password, you can write down a hint. The hint will be just enough to jog your memory, but not enough to give the password away. For the hint, write something you will remember the word by, plus the extra characters and the replacement characters. Here's how I would write my hint for T01ed0AB: City 01AB That way, you know the password is the name of a city, the replacement characters are 0 and 1 and the extra characters are AB. That should be enough to remind you of your password, but not enough for someone else to guess what it is. Cool, huh?! Until next time, stay safe out there, my friends!" Source:- Taken from the WorldStart's 'computer tips' newsletter, to which I subscribe. Title: Re: Advice for constructing secure passwords. Post by: seanjoe on October 01, 2009, 09:46:16 AM nice one. i think the point is to have a logic to any password construction, and then just keep using that technique each time.
Title: Re: Advice for constructing secure passwords. Post by: ash on October 01, 2009, 01:35:37 PM A survey showed that many people use the name of their first girlfriend as password. Don't use simple names, own DOB or place of birth as password.... too easy to crack... security answers such as place of birth should also be used untrue so as no one can guess even if they know your correct place of birth.
Title: Re: Advice for constructing secure passwords. Post by: petkow on October 07, 2009, 05:21:35 PM After this latest email username and password Phishing attack, some people who got the list of the hotmail passwords before it was taken offline managed to generate some interesting (yet alarming) statistics. The top 2 passwords that people apparantly chose are
123456 and 123456789 Have a read of: http://www.acunetix.com/blog/websecuritynews/statistics-from-10000-leaked-hotmail-passwords |