{"id":52427,"date":"2017-04-09T21:44:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T02:44:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/?p=52427"},"modified":"2017-04-09T22:07:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T03:07:12","slug":"password-generators-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/?p=52427","title":{"rendered":"Password generators suck"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a book project I had to review the current state of password generators, including the Schneier<\/a> vs. GRC<\/a> vs. XKCD<\/a>\/diceware<\/a> wars.<\/p>\n

Bah. Humbug. The memorable vs. random debate is obsolete. The real criteria is tappable<\/strong>. A password needs to be tappable on a twee iPhone virtual keyboard that shows only one character at time (Yes, I use 1Password. I still find lots of times I have to type and tap.) I can’t tap a long random string. I even have a hard time tapping an 8 word string — and I don’t have the patience for it.<\/p>\n

I think the obscure and much maligned Apple keychain\u00a0‘Memorable’ password generator strikes the right balance. A mixture of (pseudo) randomly (I hope) selected pronounceable strings with some extra characters. I usually tweak the words to be less English (but still memorable) and I toss in “extra characters” that don’t require too much keyboard shift\/swap. I generally stop at around 16 characters.<\/p>\n

It’s too bad Apple’s password generator is so hard to access. On OS X I use an ancient and now vanished app called “Password Assistant” (2006, codepoetry – don’t try the domain, it was lost long ago) that invokes it. I can’t believe nobody has put something like this on the Mac App store. On iOS there’s no easy way to access it, you only see it when entering a password on a web form (again, why no app to invoke it? Too bad Siri can’t access it.)<\/p>\n

Sure, the NSA could crack these too short and too englishy passwords in a few hours. But a serious hacker team wants my stuff, much less US border security, I’m screwed anyway. For most criminals I just need to be have something well above average. That’s not hard …<\/p>\n

PS. I think Atwood came close to me in his 2015 essay<\/a>: “passphrases … are exceptionally painful to enter via touchscreen in our brave new world of mobile \u2013 and that is an increasingly critical flaw.” Alas, he seemed to have forgotten this in his 2017 essay<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a book project I had to review the current state of password generators, including the Schneier vs. GRC vs. XKCD\/diceware wars. Bah. Humbug. The memorable vs. random debate is obsolete. The real criteria is tappable. A password needs to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-t"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52427"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52435,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52427\/revisions\/52435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.kateva.org\/sh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}