Be more secure - Speak |_337

Fred Sherman

Well-known member
Nothing is more important to your site than two passwords: your Administrator password and your database password. But are they truly secure? Why not check for yourself: http://askthegeek.us/pwd_meter/index.htm

So, how'd you score? Want to improve it?

In programming classes, the universal first program every language starts with is the "Hello World" program. Would you be surprised to learn that this near universal experience for programmers can also be an outstanding password?

Hello World

Now, lets speak LEET and transform it.

H becomes }{ - One letter becomes two special characters.
E becomes 3 - Now we have a number.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. We have two L's. We don't want to use the same character for both. Repeating characters in a password are bad. So we are going to use 1 and !, the same key, but one is shifted. Easy to type. But the order is important. 31! is not as strong as 3!1, because in one case, there are two numerials in a row. 31, two numeral, is a single number. so...

LL becomes !1

The simple substitution for o would be 0, but them we would have two numeral again. So, to make our password stronger and longer...

O becomes ()

We can't have spaces in a password

<space> becomes *

This is an especially nice substitution, because if anyone is ever watching, they aren't sure if you've typed that in or if it was a password field substitution. Anytime a password can contribute to physical security too, thats bonus points.

My favorite replacement in this whole series is "W", which looks like double v's, or vv. But we can't have repeating letters, so...

W becomes v\/

no prior letter, so

O becomes 0

The letter R is another example of a two character substitutions. !^, so

R becomes !^

L becoems 7

D becomes cl

"Hello World" is now "}{3!1()*V\/0!^7cl"

Go ahead, see how it scores. 100% secure.

I'm not suggesting that you use Hello World as your password. But if you decide on just a handful of substitutions that you can remember and a meaningful phrase with more than just 8 characters, you can develop longer, more secure passwords that aren't a problem to remember or type.
 
100/100 on my usual passwords to, well, the internets. Didn't bother testing database passwords and the likes.

Awesome find though. Will be using this :)
 
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