Perfect Passwords, Every Time<\/p>\n
by Richard White<\/p>\n
2011-07-20<\/p>\n
Man, I am really<\/i> getting tired of all this talk about passwords.<\/p>\n
Okay, okay, I’m one of the people who has been talking about them, but… still. Seriously. Can’t we all just learn how to create awesome passwords and be done with it?<\/p>\n
You know all the don’ts<\/b>, right?<\/p>\n And then there are the do<\/b>s, which can be a bit overwhelming.<\/p>\n I probably don’t need to spend a great deal of time explaining the rationale behind these rules, which are well-founded. Bad guys do<\/i> try to guess your passwords, both to important things like your bank account, and seemingly trivial things like your email (which they can use to get your bank account passwords). Bad guys use computer programs to try to guess your passwords. Bad guys look at passwords stolen from other places like Sony and try to use them for your other accounts.<\/p>\n It’s a jungle out there. But here’s how you can deal with it. All you need is a system<\/i><\/b>.<\/p>\n It needs to be your own system, of course. You don’t want to reveal your system, your pattern, your trick<\/i>, to anyone else, because then they’ll<\/i> know your system, and will be able to guess your passwords. Not good.<\/p>\n But I’m going to show you my<\/i> system, and you can use something similar, and then we won’t ever have to talk about how to make good passwords again, mmm-kay? :)<\/p>\n Here’s what you need:<\/p>\n Let’s see what those four items mean, and how they can be used to create a good password.<\/p>\n The foundation of your passwords is a good root password, sufficiently random that no one will be able to guess where it came from. You will use this same awesome root for every site you use. My personal recommendation is to use the initials of a favorite song lyric or passage from a book.<\/p>\n Some examples:<\/p>\n These are already some pretty good little passwords, but they’re too short (susceptible to random guessing) and they aren’t going to be different based on place. Let’s fix that.<\/p>\n We’re going to add, on either side of your root password, one or two characters that are unique to where that password is being used. For this exercise, let’s say that we’re just going to add a single letter before and after our root, and those letters (according to the system I’m using, are the first and second letters in the place name. If I’ve selected “WtpotUS” as my root password, how does that affect our passwords?<\/p>\n\n
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1. A root<\/h3>\n
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\n “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”<\/td>\n →<\/td>\n ItBGctHatE<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra”<\/td>\n →<\/td>\n Oldoldlgob<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n “We, the people of the United States…”<\/td>\n →<\/td>\n WtpotUS<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n 2. A place<\/h3>\n