On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Richard Pieri <[email protected]> wrote: > I have a better solution: use a FIPS 181 password generator to generate > a "phrase" of nonsense, stuff that into your encrypted keychain, and be > done with it.
That's fine for JFDI. Assuming FIPS-181 'words' are mnemonic enough for you. ( Some folks prefer the more mnemonic structure of XKCD "Horse Battery Staple" to FIPS "jegewmat". ) But Ned and I are talking natural language entropy theory, so that we may *compare* strengths with a metric. [ just as you were talking escrow/centralization theory before, to compare weaknesses.] Note that the English-like pronounceability rules of FIPS-181 syllable structure enforces a weaker structure (thats good here!) than rigid consonant-vowel alternation, so delivered entropy bits per char are rather less than log2(26)=4.7b, but it seems far better than English words. [ The FIPS-181 ETAONRISH character frequency of the random urn is such that 'x' is 10x rarer than 'a' . By itself almost the urn achieves roughly the same 4.7bits as uniform a..z distribution until a slight deduction is made for the dipthongs 'ch' etc that it generates as urn units; but since equal frequency 'a' and 't' are more or less likely in a position based on vowel/consonants around it, as filtered in actual use it delivers rather less. Probably still more than 3 bits though, since a strict CACA|ACAC alternation with this Urn loses less than a bit per char, not shabby. ] -- Bill Ricker [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
