Pc Security- Passwords
Passwords are the key fundimentals to pc security and picking a Correy one
could save your email account, face bock or even your bank account. It's hard
to believe that some people still use passwords like "123456" or "password",
now that's just stupid; imagine a hacker cracked your password that you used
for all your accounts etc to be safe you should create a unique and difficult to
crack password for all your accounts.
So do you know how to create a good password? Here are some tips and
tricks that will help you on your way.
Know The Characteristics Of A Safe Password
It cannot be found in a dictionary.
It contains special characters and numbers.
It contains a mix of upper and lower case letters.
It has a minimum length of 10 characters.
It cannot be guessed easily based on user information (birthdate, postal code, phone number etc.)
Create An Easy To Remember Base Password
You can use several techniques how to create a good password that you will
not forget. Here are some suggestions.
Randomly replace letters with numbers, e.g. flirt becomes fl1r7.
Pick a sentence, i.e. your passphrase, and reduce it to first letters of each word only,
e.g. “Everything I Do I Do It For You†becomes EIDIDIFY.
Take a word and reverse spell it, e.g. neighborhood becomes doohrobhgien.
If you don’t feel safe with “easy to remember†passwords, try a password generator; they are
nearly unhackable and I personally prefer using programs like this. Here is a list of great ways
to generate and store passwords.
Keepass
A Keepass database stores all your passwords inside of it in an encrypted state, and uses
one master password and/or a key-file to access that database. KeePass has fields for
username, password, URL and notes associated with each login, and you can create login
groups (like, Windows, web sites, Wifi networks) to organize your passwords. KeePass is
highly secure; if you keep it running, it will lock its workspace after a certain amount of
idle time and require you to enter the master password again to access the database.
This and the fact that Keepass generates random passwords is why I personally use it.
Perfect Passwords
Perfect Password was created by world renowned programmer Steve Gibsons,the algorithm
used ensures a high level of entropy, and although there is no source code available to
corroborate tech specs with the notes on the website, I personally trust it. The connection
between the GRC server and your computer is secured by a SSL connection and the generator
produces three strings at once: 64 random hexadecimal characters (0-9 and A-F), 63 random
printable ASCII characters, 63 random alpha-numeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9). The most
secure of all is the ASCII string which contains numbers, letters and special characters.
PCTools
PcToolsprovides different options for generating passwords: length, punctuation, numbers,
letters etc. as well as a SSL secured connection. They also have a freeware, offline version
of the generator. It’s not open-source and the technical details are not available for inspection.Download
GoodPassword
GoodPasswordoffers both a random password generator with some customization options
and a “Leetâ€Â generator that “Leet Passwords are easy to remember acronym passwords
generated by combining the first letter of each word, randomly changing the case, and
replacing alphanumeric characters with their Leet (1337) equivalents, that is characters
that look and/or sound the same.
Test Your Password
Do you want to make sure your password is indeed safe? The Password Meter
will reveal details about the strengths and weaknesses of your password.
However, if your password is too long, i.e. too safe, this test will actually fail.
