this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
301 points (87.0% liked)

Technology

60047 readers
2829 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole idea is to make it easier for humans to remember and more difficult to brute force. Long passwords are much harder to brute force than complex passwords with lots of special characters. And they're a lot easier for humans to remember.

There are enough words in any language that it's virtually impossible to guess the correct four words, even if they're in the dictionary.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Even so, most password requirements will force you to add them anyway. Quick way to do it is to just pick a number on a keyboard and add it and the symbol to the end. e.g HorseBattery2# and so on.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

And requirements like that are why my password strengths are completely out of whack:

  • Random websites get 24 randomly generated printable characters stored in my password manager. This is essentially unbreakable with conventional methods and can easily be adapted to fit whichever counterproductive rules the website enforces.
  • My password manager and my home computers get memorable but long phrases. A particular favorite is to start in the middle of a line from a song and continue from there. Nobody's going to guess "make you swear and curse when you′re chewing on" but it's easy to memorize of you already know the song. Even a dictionary attack is going to have trouble with that many words.
  • My work accounts get the bare minimum that complies with whichever rules the admins came up with. Numbers, special characters and mixed capitalization? No thirty letter phrase for you, then; you'll get the minimum eight characters so I have a chance of memorizing the thing. Regular password changes? Great, now the last two chargers are going to be incrementing digits, just like for everyone else.

There's a reason why experts these days argue against anything but minimum length restrictions.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

You can even make a complete sentence that makes sense with symbols and numbers.

"Ronaldo doesn't grill 76 Canadian Tacos."

Or whatever