Creating a secure password that you can remember!

[The_KiD]

I recently wrote a little guide for another forum on creating a secure password and thought it would be good for you guys too.

The usual rules to use when creating a password are:

1) Make sure the password is 6 characters long minimum, the longer the password the better.
2) Use uppercase and lowercase letters
3) Use numbers as well as letters
4) Throw some random characters in there too e.g: ( ! " £ $ % ^ & * { } : @ ~ < > )

Passwords using this formula will not only be impossible for someone to guess, but password cracking programs would take days to crack them too.

The problem with this is it can be hard to remember to so a good way to do it think of a word you would use as a password for example:

internet

Now replace some of the letters with numbers:

int3rn3t

Now capitalise some of the letters:

inT3rn3T

Now if possible replace some of the letters with characters:

!nT3rn3T

or just stick some characters in the appropriate places:

"inT3rn3T"!

and now you have a nice strong password

(p.s. this is not my password )

 

[blairw]

Thats great - give my password away to everyone why dont you?

Good guide tho

 

[m3csl2004]

i use random numbers and letters, around 15 charecters long, and i repeat it in my head untill i remember it, i had my main password hacked once, didnt like it

everyones like when they see me type it

 

[Silent Bob]

Another easy way of making a password is to use 2 random words and join them together. Such as monkeycarrot for instance. Won't come up using any dictionary searches and long enough to take an age to crack using a brute force attack. Can also make it even stronger by adding non alpha numeric characters or unicode symbols such as Ý é ¾ or an extra word to make it even longer.

If you used a 2, 5+ character word password all lower case, both words being in common use in the english language and you told the person attempting to crack it all of this you're looking at 400,000,000 different combinations (around 20,000 words commonly used today).

Then try 2, 5+ character random words from 2 different languages such as bonjourdeutschland that will be virtually impossible to crack.

 

[stoofa]

Just use pass phrases rather than passwords.
Increasing the number of characters in a password will always make them a lot more difficult to guess or crack.
Even better if your pass phrase has very uncommon words in:

Twas the night before christmas

Of course from a confusion stand point you could try the password ********
Mainly because Windows defaults all "Remember my passwords" to eight stars.
Also if you run a cracker it will look like it failed to find your password

 

[Sanzy]

my password is my old phone number with more numbers added i use it for everything and call it my Master password i can type it so fast no one has a clue what the password even starts with

 

[Craig321]

Good guide, but I use my PHP random password generator and normally tell it to generate me a 10/12 letter pass

Craig.

 

[The_KiD]

Random pass generators are fine, but then you have to remember it.

Where as if I chose my password for over clockers it could be:

!0v3rC10Ck3r5!

and aint no password cracker cracking that any time soon

 

[PinkPig]

I'm sure that you and other people will disagree with me, but for me "!0v3rC10Ck3r5" is probably more difficult to remember, and certainly more difficult to type, than a sequence of random letters and numbers that I've chosen myself - I tend to just type a random-ish string, leave it written next to the computer for a few days and after that I'll remember it and throw it away. Never quite understood how Ov3rC10Ck3r5 is easier to remember than it is to crack!

 

[The_KiD]

Well if you know to always replace E's with 3's and S' with 5's etc, then all your remembering is capital C's and !'s.

 

[PinkPig]

Well if you know to always replace E's with 3's and S' with 5's etc, then all your remembering is capital C's and !'s.

And if plenty of people follow similar rules like that "always replace an E with a 3" then the security is greatly reduced - and just as importantly, to me, thinking "overclockers - so thats zero, then v, then capital E", and so on, means it takes a good while to type in. After a while you'll learn to do it straight away, but you'd learn to type anything straight away if you do it enough times.

I'm sure it's useful for lots of people, just not for me.

 

[SiriusB]

I don't like doing lots of upper and lower case stuff either. There is nearly always someone around me when I type my passwords in that wasting 10 minutes typing it in leaves a lot of time for someone to watch.

Currently my passwords consist of lower case and numbers and I can type them so fast that even in full view of someone they get at most the odd letter.

That coupled with having around 10 characters and it being changed at random intervals, I dont think anyone is nicking my OC account

SiriusB

 

[AJUK]

Just take a phrase and use the first letter of each word making sure there are always a few numbers, for example:

I have been a Computer Programmer for 5 years and expect to own my own company within 7!

IhbaCP45yae2omocw7!

....crack that!

 

[Ian]

i tend to use motorbike model numbers as passwords

gl1200ltd

etc

 

[4T5]

You lot are FAR to clever for me.
May change my name to wrongalways or knownothing.

Anyways those ideas are great and i need major help to remember things. My head memory is borked and i cannot find any updated drivers or patches and an RMA is just out the question.

I am going to nick 2 of those ideas so thanks for posting as i will probably have to search the archives in a while to get the combinations off you again.
Cool ideas thanks guys.

 

[The_KiD]

I think basically it comes down to what works best for you.

the guide was merely for creating a "secure" password. Letters only or numbers only is a bad idea as password cracking programs dont take too long to go through those.

 

[SiriusB]

not unless its a google [1^100]

True itll take ten minutes to type it but you know a computer will take months to brute force it lol

SiriusB

 

[Snow-Munki]

my old work place was :

tf0s0rc1M

microsoft backwards, no idea why. only temp there for a few weeks.

 

[AJUK]

my old work place was :

tf0s0rc1M

microsoft backwards, no idea why. only temp there for a few weeks.

hehehe. I like that one.

It seems almost blasphemous, like putting a cross upside down or a pentagram.

 

[Craig321]

Random pass generators are fine, but then you have to remember it.

Where as if I chose my password for over clockers it could be:

!0v3rC10Ck3r5!

and aint no password cracker cracking that any time soon

I don't remember a lot of my passwords, I just store them in a passworded program (eWallet) - that's the password I keep in my head. But I do also have some passwords that I remember.