Butch Femme Planet - View Single Post

dreadgeek · 06-27-2011, 12:26 PM

Great topic Linus. I want to add two things to this topic.

1) Creating a strong password. I use a cipher technique to make any password that I think I might have to type in (like the password to login to my laptop or my workstation). Take a word or phrase you will remember, then shift your keystrokes in some direction. For example, if you take applepie (which would be a horrible password) and shift it up and left you get
Q00o3083. If you want to be really crafty you can change some of those numbers into symbols so Q00o#)83. Now, someone attempting to break your password has to to determine what your starting word is and what your cipher scheme is. With this, even an 8-character password becomes unguessable by sheer luck or brute force.

2) Buy a password manager. For *everything* else, I use a password manager. This is a piece of software that plugs into your browser and will remember passwords for you and will also create strong passwords for you that you need not remember. You secure it with a master password so instead of having to remember your password for your bank, and your electric company, and your phone company, etc. you remember the master password. The one I use is called 1 Password . It works on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android. I use it on both my employer-provided Windows box and my phone and my Mac and when I buy an iPad later this year, I'll throw it on that as well.

The beauty of this is that it can sync using Dropbox or over your WiFi so the password file is always up to date regardless of the device. It's strength is creating strong password. Although my cipher scheme is workable and creates passwords that are reasonably strong, 1 Password allows you to use passwords that you simply couldn't remember. Here are three that I randomly generated as an example (i.e. this isn't the password to my bank account). 1 Password will run you $39.99 for the Mac or PC version and another $5.00 for the iOS version. But very well worth it!

yot4med5hib4ced
Z{8h?3dqW6(:42J
4a4p6x;KtM8B>U8;@6Dy

As you can see, those passwords are all but unguessable and anyone this side of a national intelligence agency (like the NSA) would have a hell of a time cracking it.

Cheers
Aj

06-27-2011, 12:26 PM	#4
dreadgeek Power Femme How Do You Identify?: Cinnamon spiced, caramel colored, power-femme Preferred Pronoun?: She Relationship Status: Married to a wonderful horse girl Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Lat: 45.60 Lon: -122.60 Posts: 1,733 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 1,132 Thanked 6,844 Times in 1,493 Posts Rep Power: 21474852	Password manager/strong passwords Great topic Linus. I want to add two things to this topic. 1) Creating a strong password. I use a cipher technique to make any password that I think I might have to type in (like the password to login to my laptop or my workstation). Take a word or phrase you will remember, then shift your keystrokes in some direction. For example, if you take applepie (which would be a horrible password) and shift it up and left you get Q00o3083. If you want to be really crafty you can change some of those numbers into symbols so Q00o#)83. Now, someone attempting to break your password has to to determine what your starting word is and what your cipher scheme is. With this, even an 8-character password becomes unguessable by sheer luck or brute force. 2) Buy a password manager. For everything else, I use a password manager. This is a piece of software that plugs into your browser and will remember passwords for you and will also create strong passwords for you that you need not remember. You secure it with a master password so instead of having to remember your password for your bank, and your electric company, and your phone company, etc. you remember the master password. The one I use is called 1 Password . It works on Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android. I use it on both my employer-provided Windows box and my phone and my Mac and when I buy an iPad later this year, I'll throw it on that as well. The beauty of this is that it can sync using Dropbox or over your WiFi so the password file is always up to date regardless of the device. It's strength is creating strong password. Although my cipher scheme is workable and creates passwords that are reasonably strong, 1 Password allows you to use passwords that you simply couldn't remember. Here are three that I randomly generated as an example (i.e. this isn't the password to my bank account). 1 Password will run you $39.99 for the Mac or PC version and another $5.00 for the iOS version. But very well worth it! yot4med5hib4ced Z{8h?3dqW6(:42J 4a4p6x;KtM8B>U8;@6Dy As you can see, those passwords are all but unguessable and anyone this side of a national intelligence agency (like the NSA) would have a hell of a time cracking it. Cheers Aj __________________ Proud member of the reality-based community. "People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett)