On Tuesday, March 26, 2002 11:35 AM Sumit Dhar wrote: > So would you step forward and care to explain some nice methods by which you generate your > passwords.
I use the tennis ball method. I open up emacs or notepad and drop a tennis ball on my keyboard in random spots while occasionally holding down the shift key. I usually like a password between 18 and 20 characters long. I usually change my passwords on a monthly basis. For example i3h5%jheq$0#ePGB!~ is a password I used a while ago. Memorization isn't a huge problem, I just type it 100 to 150 times... I usually end up memorizing the keystrokes rather than the password itself. Another method is using a barcode or Smart card reader. (the ones that use the keyboard pass through) As long as I can maintain physical security over the barcode or smart card, brute forcing my password becomes extremely difficult. I just mash on the keyboard and produce a 300 char string that is completely random. My roommate and I thought it would be really cool to try and implement this in a wide scale network. End users could be issued a smart card with their password stored in it. If you're really paranoid you could even encrypt the password on the smart card so that only your smart card readers would be able to decrypt it. The possibilities here are endless. -Brandon -- "They shall not overcome. Whoever told them that the truth shall set them free was obviously and grossly unfamiliar with federal law." -- John Ashcroft http://www.helixcomputers.com http://www.helixcomputers.com/cdlist
