How to make strong passwords that are easily memorable

in #security5 years ago

Security experts often warn people about not to use memorable passwords because they are less secure. It's true to some extent that memorable words people often use are not a good choice for passwords.

But there are ways to make passwords more memorable than machine generated passwords. You can easily make your own passwords by combining them with words from the bip 39 list: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt

Passwords created from this list can provide fairly high security if you add a few numbers to it. I am highlighting this with an example:

This is a machine generated 24 character password:
F9QxH2QvzN7M6cs2BxGcqxSk

This is a password I formed from the bip 39 word list:
toss glass cross cube cry cat can

This is a password I created based on the bip list:
toss grass cross cube sky 111

The machine generated password has an entropy of 24 characters. Anyone trying to brute force it would have to find it among [(26+26+10)^24] combinations. That's equals to 46671789490000000000000000000000000000000000.

The 2nd password with its seven words will put it among [2048^7] or 151110000000000000000000 combinations.

The 3rd password has 24 characters. Therefore it's among [(26+10)^24] passwords or 22400000000000000000000000000000000000.

I was able to increase the password strength significantly by adding the word sky and the numbers 111. This is because they are not part of the bip 39 list. A hacker trying to break the password doesn't know that I have used words that aren't from the bip word list.

So, he will have to try all combinations. That's why it is more secure to add a number at the end if you are forming passwords from this list. I hope this will give you insights on how to make better passwords.

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