Some Fast Footsteps to Create Secure Passwords
- Generic passwords and default passwords. Examples: admin, administrator, user, guest, pass, password, etc. These are the first passwords that are tried by the password cracking software.
- Meaningful words or names. Examples: sandbox, NY, lion, john, mary, USA, etc. Easily cracked by the dictionary-assisted cracking tools.
- Words or names with added numbers. Examples: john123, pass123, 123456, number1, etc. Easily cracked by the automated cracking tools.
- Personal names, birth dates or similar information. These are used a lot as passwords and are very easily cracked. For example, if the password is a birthday, there are only hundreds or few thousands (if the year is included) possible combination’s, which is very weak for a password.
- Choosing “randomly” letters and numbers. It appears random but only at first sight. Numerous research studies have proven that humans are not very good at random picks – they always try to spread the things too evenly, which is not random behavior.
- “Random” typing on the keyboard with closed eyes. This is slightly better than random choosing but still nowhere random enough.
- Online random password generators. Much better than the previous two alternatives but have 2 major drawbacks. The first is the possibility that the generated password may be saved on the website with malicious purposes or someone may eavesdrop on your connection and intercept the generated passwords. The second major problem is the quality of the random number generators, which very often is not up to the task. Many of them are naively implemented and provide a lot fewer combination’s than theoretically possible (no more that tens or hundreds of millions, which is not strong password by any means).
- Specialized random password generator programs. The best option as long as they are implemented properly and come from trusted source.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!