Christian Einfeldt wrote: > WRT to number four, I can't believe that someone would guess my > passwords. They are events in my life that no one but me knows > about. How would anyone guess that? Even now that I have > announced it to the world? Heh.
Easy. 1) Start by running it through a dictionary including every word in English, Spanish and French. This would include the names of people, cities, countries, etc. If your password can be obtained through this method, you're screwed. A computer will find it in 2 minutes. 2) Then go through the list again making simple changes to the entries like various capitalizations, revernsing the letters, adding or removing a few letters, or modifying a few letters. If your password can be obtained through this method, you would be only a mildly inconvenient target. The attacker would have to go out for lunch while the computer finds your password. 3) Then try quasi-random collections of characters that still bear a resemblance to English phonetics. For example, "wasnunco". If your password can be guessed with this method, you are still screwed. The system Smoot recommended is good, and is popular advice. Think of a phrase that you can remember easily. For example, let's use the phrase "Christian loves Wednesday night baseball" Start using the first letter of each word: clwnb Change the capitalization to something you'll remember. ClWnb Add your favourite 3-digit number at the end. For example, I like 144 because it's 12 squared. ClWnb%144 Notice I added a character to separate them. Then replace 'b' for "baseball" by ! because it looks like a basemall bat. ClWn!%144 This would be a suitable password for most applications. Though I woudln't use it for my banking account. Cheers, -- Daniel Carrera | Rigorous reasoning from inapplicable Join OOoAuthors today! | assumptions yields the world's most http://oooauthors.org | durable nonsense. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
