this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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Disclaimer: I use a password manager, so please don't direct your comments at me.


So I know this person that says they don't use a password manager because they have a better system like... I'm gonna give an example:

Lets say, a person loves Star Wars, and their favorite character is Yoda. The favorite Their favorite phrase is from The Good Place "This is the Bad Place!". And their favorite date is 1969 July 20th (first landing on moon).

So here:

Star Wars Yoda = SWYd

"This is the Bad Place!" = ThIThBaPl!

1969 July 20 ---> 69 07 20

So they have this "core" password = SWydThIThBaPl!690720

Then for each website, they add the website's first and last 2 characters of the name to the front of the password...

So, "Lemmy Forum" = leum

Add this to the beginning of the "core" password it becomes:

leumSWydThIThBaPl!690720

For Protomail Email it's: prilSWydThIThBaPl!690720

For Amazon Shopping it's: amngSWydThIThBaPl!690720

Get the idea?

The person says that, since the beginning of the password is unique, its "unhackable", and that the attacker would need like 3 samples of the password to figure out their system.

Is this person's "password system" actually secure?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (7 children)

~~I hope you didn't make their actual basic phrase public.~~

In my opinion any password that's designed to be human-friendly isn't secure. Every crutch one uses to remember it, a machine can make much faster use of.

In this case I'd say the core idea: "SWydThIThBaPl!" is relatively safe, but 690720 is almost immediately recognizable as a date - to a machine! - and amng, leum etc. are even easier assuming the cracking program has knowledge of which site they're trying to gain access to.

So the only good part is the one that repeats for every password.

I think the top half of this xkcd illustrates some of it; but iirc the bottom half has been sort-of half debunked.

In any case, I use only very long and completely random passwords for online accounts.

Does this person think password managers are crutches? You cannot out-remember a machine.


PS: entropy is not the only measure for password safety.

  1. Dictionary attacks
  2. Leaked passwords
  3. Password guessing attacks

Brute force comes way down the list.

[–] throwawayacc0430 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Its an example. Not a real password

If you replace the "SWydThIThBaPl!690720" part with a random string like: dsh2box5hRs3wraA (just generated this), but kept the system the same, would your assessment of this system be different? (Assuming someone can actually remember that string of characters)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Your new example is confusing. With or without the date?

In any case, what would be the point? "I can remember the first 4 letters of the password but not the last 20"?

This person needs to understand that they cannot outsmart a machine, at least not in this. FWIW I've been using keepassxc for I don't even remember how many years and never had a problem with it. It has the option to additionally encrypt the database with a file, so if someone steals the database and even manages to guess the password (the only one that I haven't written down anywhere) they still don't have access.

[–] throwawayacc0430 2 points 1 day ago

"Lemmy Forum" = leumdsh2box5hRs3wraA

Protomail Email = prildsh2box5hRs3wraA

Amazon Shopping = amngdsh2box5hRs3wraA

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