Huh, TIL. I had no idea that was an option but that’s super useful for things I need to type in on a device with no keyboard, or even things I can’t access my password manager for. Thanks for the protip there!
Is it really safer? I mean when trying to bruteforce a password, one would have to make a guess whether it’s a passphrase or not. But if you decided to check for pass phrases, wouldn’t the one you posted be cracked in 5 times the amount of words in that dictionary? I’m not sure how large the vocabularies of the generators are, but I would guess a random 17 char password might be safer than a 5 phrases password?
but I would guess a random 17 char password might be safer than a 5 phrases password
And you would be very wrong about that. A 5 phrase password has entropy. “finance-caffeine-utopia-redress-unseen” is 28 characters. If you add in a different symbol between the words and add a number somewhere, this password becomes incredibly difficult to brute force.
For symmetric keys, since they cannot be weakened using quantum computing, their strength can be assessed by their bit-equivalent amount of entropy:
40 bit or less - easily breakable
64 bit - not so easy, but doable
128 bit or more - basically unbreakable
Those are equivalent to, respectively:
0-9 - 12, 19, 38 characters
a-z - 9, 14, 28 characters
a-z0-9 - 8, 12, 25 characters
A-Za-z0-9 - 7, 11, 22 characters
A-Za-z0-9+special - 7, 10, 21 characters
Moral of the story: drop the special characters, and even the numbers… and even the uppercase. A 30+ character long all-lowercase pass phrase, is already unbreakable.
All cool and dandy, until you have to type that random 50 letter string on your TV.
Many PW managers let you generate passphrases, which are all around better than random strings. Length is the most important factor so
Is way stronger and easier to remember (and type) than
Huh, TIL. I had no idea that was an option but that’s super useful for things I need to type in on a device with no keyboard, or even things I can’t access my password manager for. Thanks for the protip there!
And pass phrases are faster to type and with less typos even though they need more characters than passwords to be the same secure.
Is it really safer? I mean when trying to bruteforce a password, one would have to make a guess whether it’s a passphrase or not. But if you decided to check for pass phrases, wouldn’t the one you posted be cracked in 5 times the amount of words in that dictionary? I’m not sure how large the vocabularies of the generators are, but I would guess a random 17 char password might be safer than a 5 phrases password?
And you would be very wrong about that. A 5 phrase password has entropy. “finance-caffeine-utopia-redress-unseen” is 28 characters. If you add in a different symbol between the words and add a number somewhere, this password becomes incredibly difficult to brute force.
I’ll let xkcd explain it better.
Youre right,different separators, numbers and even capital letters change my theory alot
It’d be dictionary length to the fifth power, not times five.
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For symmetric keys, since they cannot be weakened using quantum computing, their strength can be assessed by their bit-equivalent amount of entropy:
Those are equivalent to, respectively:
Moral of the story: drop the special characters, and even the numbers… and even the uppercase. A 30+ character long all-lowercase pass phrase, is already unbreakable.
Check @falsemirror@beehaw.org:
…is already over 128 bits.
PS: Correct horse battery staple