gHacks technology news » secure passwords http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:31:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Secure Password Generator http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/14/secure-password-generator/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/14/secure-password-generator/#comments Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:12:55 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/14/secure-password-generator/ Most people use easy to remember passwords that are as easy to brute force. The name of your wife, your birthday, a combination of personal data or simple words like password or god. This might be convenient and nice as long as no one tries to break into your account. When this is happening you will quickly realize that insecure passwords are a big security thread.

Password Generator (click here for a windows version) makes sure that the password that is generated will be hard to brute force and impossible to guess because it is not related to your personal life in any way. The entire process takes place in three steps. The first step involves choosing a password size ranging from 32bit to 2048bit which influences the password length. The author suggests using 40-72 bits for normal security and 90-128 bits for high security.

72 bits for instance means a password with 12 chars, 1024 bits would mean a password with unbelievable 171 chars. After choosing the password size you have to type some random keys (longer for greater sizes) which are used to compute a password. The last step displays the password. The default encoding is base64, you can also opt for hexadecimal or pass phrases which influence the length of the password.

You might have a problem remembering the password and I suggest you use a program that saves the password safely. I wrote a little article about a secure password manager pins which you might want to try.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/14/secure-password-generator/feed/ 0 Secure Passwords Manager PINs http://www.ghacks.net/2006/04/26/secure-passwords-manager-pins/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/04/26/secure-passwords-manager-pins/#comments Wed, 26 Apr 2006 09:12:39 +0000 admin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/04/26/secure-passwords-manager-pins/ Users have many passwords that they have to remember, not only for website logins but also for credit cards, bank cards and the like. Many of them force you to use a different password because they have certain restrictions how the password has to look like. (for example 6 digits, a minimum of 8 chars aso.) That means, the trick to have only one password for everything is not working that well, besides being really insecure.

The secure passwords manager PINs stores all your passwords and other vital information like account data using a 448 bit Blowfish algorithm. PINs can be run directly from any device including USB or Floppy making it a great tool for everyone who is not accessing a computer exclusively from home. It supports multiple accounts, safe file wiping, supports an unlimited number of text and data and is open source.

[tags]freeware, password, open source, tool, windows, blowfish, encrypt, secure[/tags]

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