Tim wrote:
The last two being a key problem. By now, I've amassed about a dozen
passwords that I just cannot remember. Even if I wanted to make
memorable passwords, too many systems are so limited that you can't
easily do it (e.g. passwords are too short, etc.). Then there's the
problem of remembering which password belongs to what account. Writing
them down, or writing down the reminder trick, becomes the only way to
do so.
IMHO, the best way to create passwords (specially when you have a team
of sysadmins) is choosing a random fact about one of them (or the boss
or a common friend) and create a sentence with it. For example, if Mark
loves a soccer team that never wins, a good password may be derived from
the sentence Mark is crazy to like X soccer team . Then the password
could be Mic2LkX$t . Since the variety of symbols is quite low, we can
replace i by 1 or lowercase L, maybe add an exclamation mark before and
after (in a reference to the usage of question marks in the beginning
and end of sentences in spanish, for example) and you can get something
like !Mlc2LkX$t! . It may not be a perfect password, but is good enough
to memorize (just remember the sentence and the transformations done to
it) and you're good to go. We used this method on all passwords on my
last job, with one different set of passwords for class of machines we
had (Sun, Linux servers, Linux clients, windows clients, etc) and even
today , 3 years after I quit that job, I still remember almost all the
passwords (which is quite a feat, since I have quite a lot of trouble
remembering names, dates, formulas... pretty much anything useful)
Other method I use is quite insane but secure (I've created two
passwords that I have used for the last four years and never have been
broken). Find any app that generates a random sequence of characters
(keygens or other stuff like that can do the trick.. maybe even a tail
-f /dev/random may be useful) . If the generated sequence doesn't have
enough variety of symbols, add some more. Then try to find a way to
memorize that, using things like the phonetic alphabet, or by finding
substrings on the password which can be meaningful when examined alone.
Sometimes even reading out loud the password in other languages may help
(in my case, only after reading one of my passwords in English I found a
good way to memorize it).
--
Pedro Macedo
