Inside the brain of a Geek: Are you rolling the dice with your password security?

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I recently read an article about how a Mother uses a password methodology called Diceware to teach her young children (ages 6 and 9) how to generate secure passwords. Full article link is below and would be an excellent resource for anyone but especially parents.


“We began by using a password methodology known as Diceware, which produces passwords that are easy to remember but hard for hackers to crack. Diceware is deceptively simple: You roll a six-sided die five times and use the results to pick five random words from the Diceware word list, which contains 7,776 short English words. The resulting passwords look something like this: "alger klm curry blond puck."


After reading the article, I decided to try Diceware myself.

1.    Find 5 dice. Found 39 (Don’t know why we have that many)

2.    Open word list - http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.wordlist.asc

3.    Hit Ctrl + F to open the find feature in your browser.  Makes the process much faster.


4.    Roll the dice.

  1. 41164
  2. 51661
  3. 16226
  4. 42116
  5. 31253

5.    Use the browser’s find feature to type in the numbers and find the random word.

6.    New Password “lp riggs cask me glade”

7.    Check Password with GRC Password Haystack.  Time required to exhaustively search this password’s space is 2.94 hundred trillion trillion centuries. 


My conclusion, it is a fun and easy way to generate secure passwords that are easy to remember. I’m all for anything that gets everyone using secure passwords. Plus “lp riggs cask me glade” is easier to remember for most than “zy?mzykp4^2<C8BV!Gg&^”.


If your password requires a number or symbol go to the Diceware website listed below and they provide instructions for randomly generating those with the dice.


Resources:

Diceware http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

Diceware Wordlist - http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.wordlist.asc

WFJ – “Web Privacy Can Be Child's Play”

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052702303775504579395262543045176


GRC Password Haystack https://www.grc.com/haystack.htm

GRC Perfect Passwords https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm