technology

Use password manager

Or this

Congratulations, everyone who didn't say "password manager" just cut down the search space to crack their hexbear.net account password by a huge amount.

I use a password manager. Most of them have a built in generator that allows you to specify length, type of characters, etc...

I preface this by saying im a tech barbarian and shouldnt be relied on as a reliable source of info on tech topics.

The only bit of advice I remember on password security comes from someone critiquing snowden's suggestion in some interview where he said the best kind of passwords are pass-phrases like "MargaretThatcheris110%sexy" or some shit and basically said

"MergaretThatcher+is110%PiSSTA" is a whole lot better because it adds more randomness to the mix and makes it harder for the cumputer demons to crack your tough nut of a password open to feast upon its tender innards.

I ask my password manager to come up with something. I only have a small number of passwords I actually know, the rest are stored in keepass. I used keepass to come up with my keepass passphrase and the handful of other passwords that I keep in my head.

I dont, password manager makes a real password and remembers it for me

I don't use passwords that are possible to remember, I use a password manager instead. That's both easier and more secure at the same time, a hard to beat combo.

Regulatory information off the packaging of something you use and buy frequently.

The caps and punctuation respecting initialization of an article title, publication name and publication date of some bullshit written in a magazine.

The output of a two digit page number, one digit line number, one digit first letter of word number cypher using the isbn of a book multiple times with a one or two digit salt.

Just ask Bitwarden for one and practice it a million times till its muscle memory

Combination of the first letters of road signs and mile markers driving from your home to the nearest state park.

Memorize a long sentence, music lyrics, or something 20ish words long, and include punctuation and spaces.

Then if you want to get it extra secure replace some letters with numbers,

One thing I find useful with regards to special character requirements: it’s hard to remember a string of special characters, it’s easy to remember a number sequence with the shift key held down.

Password manager.

Then you just have remember one.

https://diceware.dmuth.org/

Use this as a main password (at least 6 words) and then get a password manager (Bitwarden or KeePassXC) to generate the rest.

Don't come up with the words yourself, roll the dice till you find one you can remember.

Come up with a handful of important main password as a series of very specific words that would be hard to guess. Throw a proper noun in there and don't make it a well-known phrase.

Important main passwords are those you need to personally remember for important accounts. Like a password manager's master passwoed, an encrypted document or backup password, or an email account.

For every other password, use an open source password manager where you control the vault. Use the built-in generator to make strong passwords that conform to whatever requirements the service has. If you don't have the capacity to control your own vault, use bitwarden and work on getting that capacity, then run your own bitwarden or vaultwarden later.

Another nugget I've heard, is if you include some random chunk in all of your passwords, like "*****" or something, even if it's predictable, just the sheer character count it adds already gives you a huge boost to entropy. At the end of the day, character count is king. (And the best way to remember long character count strings, especially when they are all unique per service, is a password manager. That's the actual real secret.)

Just do a web search for password generator, here is one from bitwarden: https://bitwarden.com/password-generator

you can make a password like vjL56q&MVNp7%5 or a passphrase like Confess-Overtime5-Scientist-Rocker-Tanning.

Either is very difficult to memorize so really you need a password manager. I don't think strong passwords and brains are compatible.

I slam my face into the keyboard until the pain goes away

Use dice to generate a good pattern: https://www.eff.org/dice

And use that with a password manager

Use a random word generator to generate 3-4 random words. Punctuate them with special characters and capitalize as inappropriately as you think you can remember, and there you go. My current password is between 20-30 characters and virtually uncrackable without a back door, and I have absolutely no relation to the words outside of their use as my passcode.

I took a long phrase I'm familiar with, peppered it with special characters and used it as the password for a Keepass database, that way I only have to remember one. That DB is synced between my devices with Syncthing. If you're tech savvy enough to use Lemmy I'd wager you're tech savvy enough to set that up.

Use KeePass XC. Come up with a unique but hard to crack master password as others have shared and which you never use for anything else other than KeePass.

Then KeePass lets you generate random password strings with settings for changing the kinds of included characters, the password length, uppercase or lowercase, etc.

I use 12345 on everything from my luggage to Planet Druidia’s planetary airlock.

I use the so obvious it surely can't be method. I've used hunter2 for at least a decade now and have never been had

uuidgen

xkcdpass

pass generate

Password Store on Android

I can't remember more than a handful of secure passwords. Put everything into your password manager other than stuff you need to type in every day. Not reusing passwords is really important.

football123

One time I got my password found and used by some group (was young and thought it'd never happen to me). Luckily I had thought of a slight variations for important passwords, but I went on a long all-night password change extravaganza.

After that I was scared to use any repeated one so I came up with a whole idea that night for how I could change them all to be entirely unique but have a process to determine it that I could remember. It mixes shifts in the alphabet, shifts on the keyboard, and a changing set of words plus big number and has symbols in the middle. I can always guess my own password within 2 or 3 guesses now.

I think it's pretty useless now, because I've learned enough to know how password managers are just much better. But I'm too lazy to fix it right now. Probably should though. But I'm also definitely convinced my method is robust enough that it would take a team working really hard to figure it all out. I'm sure someone could figure out one portion, but figuring out all of them and how to use it for other accounts would be a full time job. I don't have enough money or important stuff to steal for anyone to care enough I think lol

Memorisation, keep it written someone, check it each time you want to write it, you eventually memorize it

Creating patterns, make abstract rules that only you will remember, make passwords with that in mind (for example, left three keys of your keyboard is a numpad and every fourth letter is capitalized)

Plagiarism, just use the product codes of some random item lying around, they're long and random enough to be a good password