Re: Need to generate passwords

[Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've used a few schemes, based on rules for modifying know phrases or
words. (1) Replace some letters in a word with the last digit of their
positions in the alphabet; (2) Replace some letters with similar looking
numbers - 'B' with '3' or '13', 'H' with '4', etc. (3) Use ordinal position
in the alphabet, but use both digits, replacing, say, the second digit of
the ordinal with its corresponding letter. E.g. 'V' -->> '2B' or '2b'

(1) could be cracked in a finite time, I suppose, since, if it's a known
technique, just do all the permutations - '2' would be 'B | b | L | l | V |
v', etc. - 4 or 6 possibilities per number.

(2) is well known, so the possibilities could be run through in a finite
time, I suppose.

(3) I just made this one up, so I don't know its weaknesses - any comments
from the erudite among us?

Thanks

Vern

At 10:34 PM 10/23/2002 -0600, you wrote:
> Hi, all:
>
> I recommend choosing a "random" real word, as described in this
> thread, then interspersing digits and/or allowed special characters,
> to make it very "hard to guess" and not prone to a "dictionary"
> based attack.
>
> For example, suppose the word (chosen at "random", by whatever
> means, such as dart-throwing, etc.) turns out to be "Monday".
> I could construct "m5o4n3d2a1y" (truncate if needed to 10 chars.).
>
> This is not that hard to remember; you remember the word, e.g.,
> "monday", and the "digits", e.g. "54321".
>
> Pretty secure, yes?  But, don't ever write it down anywhere! :-)
>
> Regards,
>
> Mark S. Waterbury