Having just read through these comments, my forehead hurts from banging it against the wall and I better flush this explanation out a bit more...
First of all, I'm amazed NO ONE mentioned the classic xkcd comic on memorized random password security: https://xkcd.com/936/ [xkcd.com]
Second, forget about it all you people with your **genius** schemes for generating unique 8-11 character passwords. Congratulations, you've just been hacked. Look up rainbow tables, people!
You are all reinventing square and pentagonal wheels here. It's not working against the threat profile you face, and it's a pain in the ass for you compared to the painless solution that is already out there and explained if you just knew about it...
OK, so here is the true situation you face if you actually want to be secure:
1) You have hundreds of passwords to store.
2) Each one better be 25+ characters of RANDOM data. Otherwise, you face a very realistic threat from brute force / rainbow tables cracking you in trivial amounts of time now or in the near future.
3) You better not be reusing any of them anywhere, cause, you know, hacking.
3a) If you use a standard root and "permute" it, you are relatively safer until one of your sites storing it in cleartext gets revealed, and then guess what, literally *everyone* uses the first character or two of the site name, or one or two letters more than the first characters to permute. So if you are ever an actual individual target as opposed to a mass script kiddie attack, you're toast. I know, and you thought you were so clever!
1) You have hundreds of passwords to store.
2) Each one better be 25+ characters of RANDOM data. Otherwise, you face a very realistic threat from brute force / rainbow tables cracking you in trivial amounts of time now or in the near future.
3) You better not be reusing any of them anywhere, cause, you know, hacking.
3a) If you use a standard root and "permute" it, you are relatively safer until one of your sites storing it in cleartext gets revealed, and then guess what, literally *everyone* uses the first character or two of the site name, or one or two letters more than the first characters to permute. So if you are ever an actual individual target as opposed to a mass script kiddie attack, you're toast. I know, and you thought you were so clever!
AND, even if you managed to memorize all this, it's a goddam PAIN IN THE ASS to type these passwords in, especially on phones.
Here is a solution that is 1) easier to remember, 2) faster to access your websites and login, and 3) order of orders of magnitude more secure:
Stesps:
1) Generate a SINGLE 6-7 word diceware PASSPHRASE. https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
2) Memorize it. This should take you all of two minutes.
3) Download passwordsafe or keepass or another trusted OFFLINE password manager. I'm not going to press my personal preferences here. But it should have an automatic password generator feature.
4) Lock the password manager with your diceware passphrase and start generating 30+ character random, unique passwords for each site you use.
1) Generate a SINGLE 6-7 word diceware PASSPHRASE. https://theintercept.com/2015/... [theintercept.com]
2) Memorize it. This should take you all of two minutes.
3) Download passwordsafe or keepass or another trusted OFFLINE password manager. I'm not going to press my personal preferences here. But it should have an automatic password generator feature.
4) Lock the password manager with your diceware passphrase and start generating 30+ character random, unique passwords for each site you use.
If you have a good tool (I use passwordsafe), you can store the URL, username, and password and with a combination of 3 hotkeys open any website, and login in under 2 seconds for any of the hundreds of TRULY SECURE passwords you store.
You can sync the encrypted pwd manager file to your mobile and other devices and access from there with equal security.
And a passphrase with all lower case letters to unlock your pwd manager is even faster to type on a computer or phone than a single one of these insecure, short, alpha-symbol-numeric jokes people are advocating the genius of here.
OK. Now you know. So spread the word and forget all this elaborate security theater nonsense.
'via Blog this'
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