Re: Hacked!

Catriona R <catrionarNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Tips for making rememberable but secure passwords - take something you
can remember and then adjust the letters to numbers or symbols which
are similar, s>%, i>1, etc. Rememberable things could be memorable
dates

These are both horrible ideas. If you use insertion characters into an
otherwise ordinary word, add them as *additional* characters, not as
replacement characters ala leetspeak. Brute-force dictionaries simply and
algorithmically do all the well-known substitutions faster than you can
think of them! And dates are a bad idea if they have anything to do with
you, because you might accidentally blog about them someday. Simple rule -
if you've ever said your password to anyone out loud in any context
(even if it wasn't your password at the time), it's a bad password. It's a
nice rule, because in one stroke it eliminates any word in any language you
know, and the names of everyone you've ever met.

The best passwords take something you can remember, and then perform some
substition or mangling that you can easily remember how to do yourself, but
are completely opaque to anyone else. If you want to write it down, you
write down the pre-mangled form, and not the transformation rules. *
--
* PV Something like badgers, something like lizards, and something
like corkscrews.
.

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