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Show HN: Memorable but hard to crack password generator

passw.org
11 pointsadamneilson11 comments
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As mentioned these passwords aren't hard to crack.

Anything based on a word list is going to be inherently easy to crack, and with a predictable format like word-separator-word, it is even easier.

I realise this is a fun weekend project, and learning new languages is always a good thing, but I think it's a little irresponsible to make any claims that these passwords are secure.

Also as mentioned, if people were to actually use this for password generation it should be behind SSL, although I would discourage anyone from using passwords generated by a remote service.

Having uncommon words doesn't make a password hard to crack, they're in the dictionary just the same.

Having long words does make brute-force cracking harder.

Which is why everyone tries the dictionary search before the brute force.

Of course you're correct and I don't claim that these are uncrackable. Just a way to practice a bit of clojure while the missus had her girlfriends over.

The headline is "hard to crack" which seems misleading.

Assuming a generous 1000000 words in the dictionary, and any non-letter ASCII printable separator allowed as a separator, this is equivalent to a 9 character random password with just lower case letters and digits, or a 7 character random password if all printable ASCII is allowed. It's about 46 bits of entropy. That is a bit low by modern minimum acceptable password length standards.

Should this not be behind SSL? Looks good though.

Probably should yes!

Pretty cool! What does the "<huge number> to one" mean exactly?

john --wordlist

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