How to memorize a sh*tload of (difficult) passwords

Years ago someone taught me how to amass huge numbers of passwords with relative ease. I started using it in a very simple form because I don't have to do anything out of the way.

Here's how it works. You have a keyboard that has columns of one, two, three, or four main character keys and the way they alternate in their stacking in rows, they make diagonal columns.

And each key is of course identified by a character.

Turns out that even today - years later a few people are just now lengthening this - no matter how many characters you give your password,

the software stops checking at 16 characters, or something like that.

But passwords are rated as ''very strong'' or the highest level, whatever it is, when they get 8 characters, and those 8 characters comprise components from 4 character sets.

[edit: Use this pattern as a preliminary and demonstration method primarily, and think about it awhile, and invent your own pattern. Also you can consider creating pass phrases like you see people recommending here, as well as at I.T. sites, but indexing them on the letters in the site name, similarly to the way I'm describing here. I've been looking up modern password cracking articles and software's getting pretty good at trying common patterns, too nowadays. You can imagine how simple it was for crackers to pick that up, so if you use lottery defined patterns, be sure to go to a password checker application, and ensure the pattern you're considering, rates high in security, within a manageable number of characters.]

The method I'm gonna discuss, exploits the shit out of this 4 x 2 concept by hitting each key in it twice: once normal, once with _SHIFT_ to make it a capital and, invoke the special character over the numerals.

You have the SHIFT button
You also have CAPSLOCK. Don't forget that.

Now glance toward the keys. See how you have columns of keys and how each and every key, just so happens to be a part of not one, but two columns?

Some columns are going up/down diagonally left, some columns are going up/down diagonally right. Right? Right.

So - as a pattern analyst you have two columns of four keys going diagonally,

you have two basic modes of using them: SHIFT and lowercase.

The third, additional mode: CAPSLOCK.

CAPSLOCK makes everything in capitals until you hit SHIFT; but there's one thing here: it doesn't invoke the special character over the numerals. You have to hit SHIFT. Now: this is the case also with the two arrow keys and the question mark, and the bracket keys too; so CAPSLOCK isn't really *just the same thing, as holding shift.

The patterns you choose, are gonna use the lowercase/SHIFT/caps function

on each key
so that you create an 8 digit password that includes both numerals and special characters; both lowercase and uppercase letters.

Special characters and numerals are important due to the way password breaking programs work.

They ask the person, how many 'character sets' they want to bang out against the password's individual character slots.

Adding numerals makes a larger set.

Adding Capitals makes a much larger set
because there are 26 capital letters.

Adding special characters - the ones that are invoked over numerals when you SHIFT - this makes a larger set

but it's also the one, typically, less likely to be used - because people figure correctly, most people, almost ALL people, use some kind of lower/caps/numerals thing. BillyBob1979. ElvisRocks

So you need to use the four character sets,

to have a password checker, give you a 'very strong' rating.


When you look at the keys, think about how it wouldn't take you very long at all - to figure out, different patterns.

The video I saw many years ago suggests a very genius way because the login page of a place, it's name isn't likely to change so it suggests you take the letters,

between www.
and
the .com/.net/.org ending of the ''name'' section.

For instance let's assume we're on the login page here at IC right now. The name of the place, is www[dot]icmag[dot]com. Whatever comes later, is which page on this site -but that portion right there, IS the REGISTERED NAME of the SITE;
and it isn't going to change.

Make up a quick easy plan, in which you devise some way to use the letters in the name section of any website, as the index
for your password.

For instance icmag has i as that first letter

so I'll pretend that being a simple minded chimp, err, chump, I use the first letter of a site, to index the password.

I Look up and right there's the name of the place: LaLaLaLa,dot icmag, dot com. The letter ''i'' it is, so I look down at i on my keyboard and hit i, SHIFT-i.

The pattern I decided to demonstrate is that since I'm left handed, I will use the line of keys, going up to the left.
That's personal to me and I can never forget it.

I also decided, that whatever the index key on a row is - here, it's the letter i...

I will make the second character, the key in that row, as FAR FROM the initial key, as I can get.

Look down.

On my keyboard, that key, is for SURE: the comma, left-arrow key: like this ,<

Can you see that's true?

Ok and my rule is simple:

my NEXT key to be invoked in that row, will be the NEXT furthest, previously unused key.

Look at the keyboard that's eight/asterisk. Like this 8*

Rule hasn't changed but there's only one key left, that's k (shift)K.

So with three simple parameters, I have made a template for passwords that are basically, almost endless: and it's the strongest password you can make with 8 characters, more or less.

Now.

The real genius to this has yet to fully unfold.

The real games begin when you decide to divide your websites, into different divisions.

For sake of best intuitive division I'll pick ''things I don't mind being RIGHT up front'' in other words politically there can't be some kind of negative stuff for people seeing it;

then I divide a second group as 'things better LEFT unsaid' and that's like.. my trisexual bondage goat bestiality pyromaniac snuff porn. My membership here. You get the picture.

Then for my third division I choose ''Work/Finance related passwords.''

Watch how fast you can come up with three different sets of completely different passwords. - Listen... - endlessly.

For those I don't mind being right out front, my key hypothetically, to show you, is to use the first letter of the name in the address bar; It's the ''first'' group of passwords I think I'll ever generate, I use the ''first'' letter of the address name of the site.

I use the diagonal line of 4 keys going up to the RIGHT for stuff I don't mind being 'RIGHT' up front'
and I use the previous key pressing pattern: index key in the row first, key farthest away, key farthest away again, then the remaining key.

Ok that's one, nearly endlessly variable array of passwords I can create.

For the 2nd group, stuff 'better LEFT un-talked about' when in public because there could be political consequences

I choose to use the 2nd letter in the address bar, (2nd group/2nd letter in the name of the web site)

and the column of keys going up, to the LEFT.
Same pattern of index key, farthest, next farthest, last key.

For the 3rd, WORK related stuff I'll simply use the third letter of the site name, (third group, third letter) the ''right up front'' diagonal line of keys, where I choose the line of keys going up to the right,

but I invoke CAPSLOCK and do the sequence, because of course we all know ''RIGHT up front'' that ''WORK IS REALLY IMPORTANT.''

I mean - I know it's kind of simple minded; but imagine how powerful this is over your lifetime.

Any where,
you have ever been,

There can only be,
mathematically, one of like 3 different passwords possible;

none of them you have to remember,

and they self select out of an almost, a practically ENDLESS number of passwords.

And let's face it.

You know where the f*** you've worked or if something deals with your finance.

So that eliminates the possible work/bank password.

And you know that the dating site, or that stuff you figure... is better ''LEFT un talked-about in front of people in general,'' from

your password to National Geographic or CNN news commentary. The 'instructables' is stuff 'RIGHT' up front.

So really, no matter what that place is for the REST of YOUR LIFE,
the password, can only be, one password. At the MOST - two.

In spite of the fact that they self select themselves out of an INCREDIBLE number of passwords possible, with 8 places.

I chose a hypothetical algorithm in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd letter theme - you can make yours, the LAST, the NEXT to last, and THIRD from last -

then there's the pattern variations you can do as far as what order you hit the keys in.

Here's how you can vary even that, with VERY good results. You know the day, is always coming, when you are gonna have to give your boss or somebody your work password on the phone. Right? Of course you are.

So for your work passwords, along with the invocation of the CAPSLOCK, simply remove the complex pattern; and on the row of keys with the proper letter to index it - let's see... icmag - let's pretend we're gonna be working for icmag, and the boss gave us a mailbox at their domain; so we're gonna have a work place password for there, the insurance company password from there, all this kinda stuff.

The third letter of icmag's website name, is m,

so i just tell the boss, if he ever calls me on the phone, ''lock the CAPSLOCK.
Going from the bottom to the top, type MKO0
press shift
Going from the bottom to the top, type mko)

Your boss will be amazed. He'll be like.. ''that's your password?'' And you'll coyly smile, nod, and seductively look deep into his shitty greens,
and think very loudly, in quiet but deafeningly loud, lime green letters- rays: coming out of your head; into his: ''Promote me, love me, throw money and prestige at me,''

and he's gonna be like.. ''Damn. My IT manager's was ''Dave1979.''

The thing about these passwords, see, is that - you never have to keep a list, all your life.

Never.

Not one.

Every password, you ever have,

is going to be self selecting,

and simultaneously it's gonna pass the ''strongest'' level for passwords, on a password security tester with 8, or 10 minimum, significant places.

The second thing about this is that you are completely protected about your other ones,

if someone discovers any one; or any two; or three, or four:

because even though they know what they are, they SEEM to
have,
a.b.s.o.l.u.t.e.l.y.
no relationship to each other,
NOR to YOU.

Because they DON'T. They DON'T have any trackable significance in any way, and how is someone going to discover how you created any of them?

You sat there at your laptop having a beer, and thought about how you were gonna do it, without consulting a soul on earth.

In fact you tuned the parameters by something that was part determined by basically - a lottery
comprising which letter in sequence, you decided to use from the page's address line,

and a lottery regarding what pattern you decided to use, on each password group.

Maybe the 1st letter, 2nd letter, 3rd letter, isn't something you wanna copy.

You give it a think; and come to the conclusion that you'll arrange it thus:

The 1st letter of any site's name will be the WORK one because
WORK FIRST,
everything else, second and third. (Go to the right diagonally cause work's gotta be done RIGHT. You get the idea here.)

Ok then your personal public & family life, you don't mind being 2nd, right alongside work,
all those sites like your race car forums,
your kid's web sites,
your bass fishing site,
NBC news, The Weather Channel, all that stuff - it gets the 2nd letter of the website's name, and you use the RIGHT direction row of keys because it's alRIGHT for people to see these places, should they look over your shoulder.

and you use the same pattern of: index letter key, furthest away in the 4-key diagonal line, then next furthest, then the last one.

and your private billy goat on fire while making love to a midget snuff porn sites,
the pot site,
your Fox news account, shit you're ashamed of because you like the devil weed in your nose when you're watching billy goat snuff porn thinking about making out with Rupert Murdoch-

for THOSE sites you decide to use the
LAST letter of the website's name;
because the LAST thing you want to HAPPEN is get caught watching Fox News. And because it's better LEFT un talked about in public
you of course use the diagonal-left direction, row of keys associated, with the last letter of the website's name in the address bar.


Seriously; if somebody said 'We discovered two of his passwords, what does this do for us as far as opening all his other stuff?

What would one or two or even three passwords, give away?

In other words, in normal real-time bond vs bond spook work, you're gonna be getting some idea you need to check your stuff; and if it's just some kid trying out his Ubunto distro and installation of John or whatever - nobody's gonna crack that just sitting around using a couple of dictionaries, and some character sets, in a short time. A lot of these places disconnect you for an hour after three fails.

And it puts a substantial stop to one leaked password setting off a catastrophic string of failed passwords because somebody can only remember say, 4, or 6 passwords in their life. Four of THOSE, hardly EVER any more, 'now I use this one and that one.' We all know the story.

These things give you * a different, brand new password, for nearly every single website you'll ever visit and register at.
----------------------

So I guess that's it for this post, I haven't really been getting out these past few years so my blogging and general literacy skills have gone through the floor; sorry for messed up grammar that seems like it came from an angry old pot warrior shaking his fist at planes flying overhead, while watering his squash with a hose. I was out watering my squash, shaking my fist at a helicopter that went by, and I had to come in and sit down before I got excited.

If I drift off and can't think of anything else to say, don't be surprised, nor offended. I sometimes drift off, and talk to myself; about when the wires were all made of wood, and men on wagons went by with tall ladders, spritzing them with mineral water so the electricity and data would flow.

It was a long time ago when I walked uphill both ways to and from school, where we all huddled around a little tiny 12 inch, monochrome monitor, and watched President Reagan give them Putinites hell. [It's a joke... Putin wasn't around then it was Gorbechav... you had to have been there in my head.]

----------------
recap because I'm SativaSpammin'. (I'm sensing I'm leaving out a lot of the easy yet creative password patterns you can create with this method. I've used this method for years but I don't talk about it a lot so I'm having memories dredge up about 'oh, and look how simply you can do them, doing like this..'' syndrome)

One of the least likely things to change is the registered name of the website.
That's between the w w w-dot, and the dot-com.

There's several ways to do it but a common one is ''things that are alRIGHT for everybody to see,

things better LEFT un talked about

and there's WORK/FINANCE.

You can index the letters in such way that you use the first, second and last letter of the name in the address bar to index your three classes of passwords.

By making sure you use the pattern of indexing letter.. then jumping as far as you can on the row, doing that again, then the last key of the four in the diagonal row, you can create a very wide distribution of the numerical and special characters among the group of 8 characters comprising the password.

Typically sites only actually check, the first 8 characters of a password, and password checkers won't give you a ''strongest'' rating for a password without using, at least 8 characters, and also using, all four, character sets: lowercase, uppercase, numerical, and special characters.

Any patterns you devise should have 8 characters, and should include all four character sets.

The patterns you select can be nearly endlessly variable themselves. You can punch in the row diagonally, then hold down shift and re punch them in some different pattern. First, without SHIFT or CAPSLOCK in say, a jumping pattern, then holding shift down, simply going from top to bottom, or bottom to top.


The usage of very low complexity patterns and methods, made up by one after admittedly thinking about it awhile - can give you a hassle free life time of passwords so complex, everyone you meet, will be shocked at how unpredictable they are, and yet, whenever you ever visit any site for the rest of your life, there can really be only one or two possible passwords out of literally millions.

It's a very powerful way to make your passwords, and I've used it for many years. I saw a video about it on youtube but I can't remember what the video was, who it was, or anything like that,

and I figured this is a good place to kind of put that up for people to check out and nod wisely, and say, verrrrry interestinG...

Ok I'm out. Peace on ya, hippies and don't take any wooden nickels from these professional government employees. They all want your shit, and they have a plan. Take it.

--------
One final note. There is also the method of dividing your passwords so you have work, and finance, like the bank, in different classes.

You have public/family stuff index on letter one of the website name in the address bar.
You have private stuff index on say, the last letter.

Have work, index on the second letter of the name

Have banking/credit related sites' passwords index on the next to last letter,

and - you can run passwords up to 8 characters, with just as strong response on a difficulty checker,

if you simply make your first pass along the row of four keys the index letter is on, without pressing shift at all,

then make another pass, holding shift down.

And you can make the direction of one pass be down,
and the direction of the next pass on that row be up.

You can actually vary it and make it even ... I was gonna say, 'kinkier.' I don't know what that means about my personality, but I think it means that if you are gonna sleep with me, you better have me take a venereal disease panel.

Anyway what I'm saying about this method is that - I really do think the way I'm describing it isn't opening up people readings' minds, about the high, HIGH level of variability available in the patterns you invoke, pressing the keys.

Skipping as many keys as possible in one pass with SHIFT not held down; then, typing the row straight from bottom or top, with shift held down - on and on, the variants on this go.

So it's not even like someone could write a whole lot of an algorithm against it, if they tried.

And furthermore the kinda neat thing about it is - there are SO MANY much easier passwords to crack, yours is always gonna be the last one bothered with.

You really have to stare at the keyboard awhile to realize, how obscure, you can get, with a password involving usage of a total of 8 keys, and you have to use

lowercase,
uppercase,
numerals, &
special characters.

You can pick the row your letter is on, and type the top and bottom keys, then hold shift and type the two middle keys, then lowercase the middle and shift/capitalize, the two top and bottom ones.

Hey - you don't even need to remain IN a ROW. You just have to have a simple rule for making some pattern on the keyboard you don't think will be easily discernable to people nearby.

You can divide the keys up into 4 crosswise rows; and somehow or other, contrive it so you just get that lowercase/uppercase, numerals/special symbols in, using 8 characters; since they also have to be LONG ENOUGH to pass muster too: it needs to be long enough that it'll take forever to hash it all, even if somebody thinks to use all four character sets - uppercase/lowercase/numerals/special symbols.

One of the drawbacks to this method is that it's difficult to do it on a phone; so you might need to think about doing four, then holding shift, and doing four more.

Ok I could Sativa spam all night. I realize this method isn't even the most secure; the most secure method is to use as many character sets as possible, invoking things like chinese and cyrillic and polish character sets, so there's just no way somebody could dream of you having all those variables in one place, so they wouldn't think to try to get a chinese and polish etc, character set.

But how is anybody going to do that in today's highly streamlined world? Nobody can. It's too unwieldy. What do you do when you're on any computer but your super special secret agent manifold character set loader?

It's not feasible.

But the making a pattern using the four character sets on your keyboard is, and the range of things you could set up is unbelievable if also improbable.

You don't need complexity. The simpler, for the most part, the better. Especially once people are doing it on their phones and have to keep the thing held in SHIFT mode while they do a section of their string of characters.

So finally LoL I'll shut up, I had some of my wife's delicious food, I had some GREAT smoke a guy seeded me, for free. We let him crash on the couch awhile and he said 'hey I kept these seeds, the bag of weed was like... strong. Thanks.'' He gave me like 50 seeds and those things make some terrific weed.

Overgrow the Government.
Overgrow the World.

I was SO stoned when I was writing the other night. I came back and changed all the times I wrote 'rows,' and it was supposed to be 'columns', and tried to have it make some more sense. LoL in fact the reason I went over it again and again was because I felt like I was too stoned to explain it.

The weed I just cut down is a really high energy sativa dominant pheno that has enough pain killer in it that it doesn't make you paranoid, but there's a big intellectual stimulant effect, too, and it stays around awhile, too; so you don't feel like when you partake you're gonna have to drop what you're doing shortly and top off your buzz.

Completely off topic, here's one for ya. Many years ago - I've been around ages although not a big pot grower, just an activist and bullshooter- I started seeing all these people come into threads talking about how, ''I tried that putting the paper bag over one of the limbs, and it made seeds. Boy am I glad for that.''

And then RIGHT behind that, a buncha people coming in, ''that shit makes everything that grows, make seeds, whether you like it or not: run away, run aWAY!''

And when you see threads like these for literally decades, you kinda wonder... I dunno, are people just that pissy?

Well - I didn't know how good this weed was gonna be, and I threw out all the seeds the guy gave me, plants looked kinda okay, I didn't feel like grabbing a 9volt battery and making colloidal silver, - because I know those don't make hermie plants, I figured - hey - I'll go ahead, and get me sum uh thim.. damn neer free, ain't evun gotta make me no silver juice, tuck-a-limb-back-behind-the-bucket-they're-in, sunlight reduced, hermies, and see finally for myself,

just what the anger issue is with people, who make some seeds this way.

Now - these seeds in this bag made some nice plants. They were... fairly evenly spread as far as the phenos, a little indica here, a lotta sativa everywhere, put on decent weight like an indica, just - good stuff. Somebody prolly arranged for that weed to be that good.

The key here is no hermies. These plants weren't hermie prone in some... unusual sense. For instance, the buds down at the bottoms of the plants, didn't have that occasional seed you often see in a plant. They were all getting good light most of the time, but there was some shading, by associated plants in a little vegetable garden I had going to kinda hide em.

So I picked 5 of the plants and stuck a limb back behind the pot on each one.

Seeds, duly appeared, forming up just like you see people say they will, and of course since I knew these plants, I was like.. Hmm. Maybe the seeds won't all hermie and throw seeds throughout the buds, even in daylight.

Fast forward to when these female plants are going into flower. They're looking pretty good, I'm growing them in something called a 'heugelkultur' which is I guess German, for 'hill culture' and what that is,

is in my case a raised bed, and the bed's about two feet tall, and in this bed, I stood on end, a whole, WHOLE bunch, of wood blocks a guy gave me when I helped him work on a house.

In the standard deal what ya do is, you kinda scratch out a little trench there, so that when it rains, you've got a little scar in the ground there a foot deep, a foot and a half deep, and you throw, a buncha wood in it. It doesn't make a rat's ass what kind of wood it is, - well - obviously you're gonna wanna go light on the ''we built it outta creosote ties!'' realm.. but it can be redwood, hardwood, pine, ash, green wood, dried wood, wood with nails in it, screws in it, hinges on it, old wire hacked down to manageable still stuck to it.

And you take the dirt from your little trench, (Every time it rains, this trench collects water and the stuff keeps wicking up into this wood, ya see, and the soil you have in between it)

and you put this dirt on top, of the pile of wood, and using an amazingly small amount of actual prepared soil, you can create this garden, ya see, that has some pretty good moisture handling. Now - growth in these isn't the world's best but it sure ain't bad, either; because your plants, can still make good root systems.

Now; I had a friend give me about three pickup truck loads of degraded wood chips that he'd gotten from cutting down some trees. I took about half a pickup truck load of these wood chips, and I just threw that stuff in between the wood blocks,

and as I did, I tossed in there, a whole bunch of this stuff you call river silt: ultra, ultra-fine flour sand that settles out, when rivers or lakes rise above their banks a long time, over and over, and this super find silt settles out. It's THE mineral supplement that makes plants able to grow in so many places, because it stirs up every day when the sun goes up, gets caught in thermals and various winds, and every afternoon world wide, the sunset is - usually - kinda red looking because of the day's dust that has stirred up.

So plants are really evolved to dissolve this micro fine mineral flour with their roots, emitting citric acid, and dissolving then uptaking the resultant sludge, as a mineral source.

Ok so I have this bed about two feet high, made out of some Redwood boards, and stakes, and then the entire thing, - the entire thing - it's just filled with wood.

So I'm growing these vegetable plants, and these pot plants, in - basically? Pure wood.

There's the dirt and degreaded junk that got scooped up with the wood chips, they're a couple of years old, he had them laying out in the open, getting rained on, being degraded by that amount of exposure.

But basically the plants were doing great in this stuff.

One day I went out there after the pot had been flowering about three weeks, and I noticed the dreaded, angry-post-stimulating hermies I had read about so many times.

I had like ten plants doing great: everything was working out FINE: and then one day, every last one of those plants, hermied. LoL.

They were throwing seeds everywhere, in very varying amounts. One or two of the plants, made just a few seeds, threaded through each bud. Some of the plants just went TOTAL seed maker mode and were just growing seeds, everywhere.

The ones that didn't have many seeds, were the ones that just got full-time sunlight, everyday, all day, hardly anything stopping full light being on almost the whole plant.

The ones that I had covered with some netting to protect the vegetables which were getting somewhat mite bitten, in the blistering heat - they all went seed-maker CRAZY.

I thought that over time maybe with the netting off they'd recover but no, all the plants had somewhere between a third to all their buds make seeds.

I'd grown some other weed already and it was far from the end of the world, but my wife and I were laughing at all those seeds in those buds. I pulled them all except a couple, because they hardly made any seeds, and it's those I broke open and started smoking.

Wow; it really was nice weed, I wish I'd made about three hundred NON hermie seeds LoL.

Anyway that's the story so far, and I'm sticking to it.

Neat as can be.

You've overcomplicated it, it's very simple ... all you have to do is remember a single master phrase, and that just has to fulfill two basic requirements:
1) long enough, ie. bare minimum 14 chars (112bits) but ideally around 30 - not longer though or youre just inconveniencing yourself, and
2) neither a dictionary word nor any common term or phrase... never use any direct quotes or famous lines. If you can encase it in quotes and find it with google its not suitable.

But how do you remember something thats not a common easy to remember thing? You just make up your own, and make it as RIDICULOUSLY OVER-THE-TOP AND ABSURD AS POSSIBLE ... ie. the various tricks that "memory experts" use.

Memory-palace with event-chaining is a good example ... instead of thinking "i have to buy bread, milk and eggs" from the shop, you might visually think "i'll go to my living room where Dolly Parton is squashing bread with her boobs, then i'll take the squashed bread and walk into the kitchen and grab a bottle of milk and pour it all over the bread to make it soggy, then i'll go to the bathroom and hand George Costanza the bread so I can throw eggs at his glasses". It's an absurd over-the-top story, and one that's still very easy to remember when you get to the store, especially as when you remember one event you remember the event it links to.

So expanding that to make a masterphrase, simply think of two characters you know doing something absurd, and preferably with a number ... "Albert Einstein 69's the Pope!" for example! Very simple to remember, it's long enough (30 chars or 240 bits), it has both upper+lower+numeric and even punctuation in this case.

It might not "visually look" like a secure password, but consider that if the English language had only 10000 words (and thats forgetting all names!) and you only used a combination of 4 different words, 10^4 = 10,000,000,000,000,000 different ones to try. In conclusion, anyone who knows how password attacks work knows that you don't need a passphrase like "asf-23f93jfefw-j3psdf=ZXCosajo-2" to be secure, as long as your passphrase meets the two requirements i mentioned at the start.

Password security checking software you see will give you a 'very strong' rating on 8 characters, if 4 character sets are utilized.

Less than 4 character sets, or less than 8 characters, and they won't give a password a 'very strong' for it.

I might have messed up when I typed that lead post and said ''past 8, they don't count.''

Past 8, out to 12 or so typically, I think it is - they do make the password even stronger, on more modern software; but on a lot of early software platforms, you had 8 active character slots and that was it. It's just that even still, the shortest ''very strong'' password you can get is 8 characters, and you need to use 4 character sets.

Realizing how badly I explained what I'm trying to say, I paused a minute:

and started rehearsing in my head how long it used to take

to tell someone how I set up their password.

This was various stuff from cell sites to security software for jails & county court complexes, software to manage things like natural gas telemetry, fiber optic switching systems, internet from satellite links, spread out into classrooms with copper. Anywhere you might install a password for somebody.

The lottery system, based in the name of the object,
took me about 30 seconds to explain to someone
when I closed my eyes and simulated showing and telling someone in person.

Now - these were I.T. guys so - it wasn't teaching the barbecue champions of Pecos County.

I had a speech where I'd tell the guy ''This router's your Toshiba so the password's based on the letter T, and you make it like this," (Start at bottom key in the t row, type cCfFtT6^) "And all your work stations' passwords, are based in the the station number, and the key right below each digit," and I'd show him me hitting 3e5t then holding SHIFT and hitting #E%T for a password of 3e5t#E%T for station 35.
"You can't forget them because there's only two patterns: yours alternating the lowercase and SHIFT-uppercase, starting at the bottom of the T column (for Toshiba), and your workstations, with the passwords indexed on the station number, going down right one key: numeral, lowercase just below them, press SHIFT, and those same keys again."

The IT systems management specialists were often surprised to have someone create 51 or whatever new temporary passwords, distributed between 51 nodes,

all different,

all rated ''very strong,''

all as short as those can be,

none needing memorization,

none needing a written 'secret' sticky somewhere.

Avoiding creation of an army of 'secret' sticky trails is a deterrent to passwords being compromised where there's a school and kids, janitors, etc find passwords.

3e5t#E%T is the start of a good password, it's disappointing you left it there at 8 chars/64bits (effectively 32bits security)

if i told you my password convention it is easier for you to guess my password

Text book reading....sorry. Take a word, divide in half, select a number to start with, capitalize last half of the word, add symbol. Viola`!

It's ok I have a badge from boyscouts about not guessing, peeking, or bogarting unless people are dumb, nude, or in possession of drugs.

Weird said:

if i told you my password convention it is easier for you to guess my password

Click to expand...

It's somewhere around here, I can get you a picture of it, it's authentic and everything, it's got 'authentic boy scout stuff' and all that. We also put it through several rounds of critical peer review, so you know it's green.

So you prolly don't wanna see it. So you can just tell me.

Ok you can see it, please watch the presentation all the way to the end though, or you might not be fully convinced of the credibility of my award.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNNkMd8faFE

p.s. There was a pretty exciting selection of badges and I couldn't figure out which one; so I went for sheer 'WoaH!' value. I saw all the other ones and they seemed funny but then I saw this one and I thought... well, prolly nobody is gonna be guessing the theme on this one. I realize now it's got absolutely zero, even way out tangentially, association, I figured people reading the first few lines of the award would be like... uhh..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8eZGpxNwrA
Ok this one's more along the line of what I was getting to.

Some of the reader comments are funny

This post was just TOTAL KooKViLLe LoL because I was up late stoned, kinda manic worryin' about some stuff, and refused to go check what in the goofy-a*#'d world I was saying.

I kinda knew I was wrong but I figured somebody would come along and straighten me out. I didn't realize it was like an insane person, just opened up a browser and started writing ludicrous malarkey. Well; maybe I did but I was also kinda like 'Yeah well... why do I give a f* there's 'edit'?

Oh yeah LoL now I remember, the ridicule and intense personal humiliation, I opened up a light portal to the entire civilized world, and started making weird patterns with a keyboard that confessed ''Oh, yeah, this'un's done. PACK it IN, somethin' happened to it and it could be suffering from some kind of anxiety from all the bright lights,

so stay back!''

Pretty much just ignore what I might have typed in this post, it's all wrong to about the last word, I was undergoing some kind of self humiliating 'who cares no body ever listens to me, anyway' kinda snit and drifted off while typing words, but not making sure, those words made sense.

(I really was in real life, sitting there pissed off about something like.. way far bigger than my spur of the moment ''New Batch of Sativa'' ''how to make your passwords using a lottery'' thread.

I smoked some of that new high flyin weed I grew, and I was like '!BaM, I'm gonna go TYPE some sh**, I don't care if it's RIGHT or WRONG!')

If I tell you all,
I've never ever done that before in my life,
will you all suspend reality based belief and reasoning, and say.. ''Oh yeah. Absolutely. I believe you completely,'' please? K thanks.

Sign
dummie the clown

Cannabis said:

If you go check you'll see it confirmed on password checking software apps, it's pretty common knowledge that for many years most server password software only counted 8 characters. Once those are unlocked you're in, even if the person setting the password specifies more. Actually it's still that way today, the majority of platforms have 8 significant characters and no more.

Click to expand...

With all due respect that's complete nonsense. Perhaps some old amateurish sites might've, for whatever stupid reason truncated passwords to 8 characters, but nobody in their right mind does, especially not in 2016, especially not when they'd be destroyed by media fire if their intentionally-pathetically-weakened system was exposed, and passwords generally aren't stored in plaintext but as one-way cryptographic hashes (so, usually 128-256 bits in length) so there's no reason to truncate them because they're using too much disk space or anything as they're all already only 16-32 bytes. But yes it's still sad that in 2016 some people are using MD5, and not even with a salt at that, and in this day and age there is absolutely zero excuse for that. For serious password stores see bcrypt, scrypt, or even better Argon2.

Yeah no shit, that's all really wrong. It's been a long time since I talked about or worked on equipment and wanted to spam a post on lotteries and how to make them, without refreshing wtf I was thinking, to get my mind off something else I was hassling over.

Actually - I kind of realized that was almost certainly wrong as stated but I was stoned and wanted to post to the thread on lotteries, to distract myself from what was really going on around me, so after f****g it up several times maybe even worse than it was as posted, I hit 'Enter'

I'm gonna go change it to something that makes more sense.

sadpanda said:

With all due respect that's complete nonsense. Perhaps some old amateurish sites might've, for whatever stupid reason truncated passwords to 8 characters, but nobody in their right mind does, especially not in 2016, especially not when they'd be destroyed by media fire if their intentionally-pathetically-weakened system was exposed, and passwords generally aren't stored in plaintext but as one-way cryptographic hashes (so, usually 128-256 bits in length) so there's no reason to truncate them because they're using too much disk space or anything as they're all already only 16-32 bytes. But yes it's still sad that in 2016 some people are using MD5, and not even with a salt at that, and in this day and age there is absolutely zero excuse for that. For serious password stores see bcrypt, scrypt, or even better Argon2.

Click to expand...

Sorry about that. I knew I was prone to getting it proof-read for me the hard way lol but I figured I'll just come in and clean it up.

Just to clear something up sadpanda: password length doesn't actually improve your security, it's like putting a baseball bat in the corner, in a REAL bad neighborhood. You TELL yourself, you're helping your chances but the fact is, you're either gonna go out and get trounced, or you're gonna get let alone: because the people who are gonna be f***n with you aren't going to be doing what you want when you want. They're gonna be doing what they want, when they want.

Just trying to sound ultra tragically hip like I'm some kind of spook or operator like those guys I saw in the movies.

But it's a well known fact. Matter of fact I can not only prove it - way beyond any doubt - I can do it using the passwords of every single person, who comes to this site.

Watch, I'm gonna show you.

In no particular order I'm gonna explain:

what I'm about to show you was true before I retired in '09.

what I'm about to show you was true when said in '13

what I'm about to show you is true today globally.

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/04/why-your-password-cant-have-symbols-or-be-longer-than-16-characters/

This is Microsoft's guy saying it but it's one of those truths you take a test question on in network security school. BASIC network security school.

Here's the sum up:

Microsoft says that most attacks on accounts cannot be defended by password length, and the company adds that password cracking is hardly its biggest problem.

Click to expand...

“Criminals attempt to victimize our customers in various ways and we’ve found the vast majority of attacks are through phishing, malware infected machines, and the reuse of passwords on third-party sites—none of which are helped by very long passwords,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars.

Click to expand...

Now: I already told you I can prove it using the password of every single person who comes to this site. But I was kind of bullshooting you a long a little because I'm actually going to prove it using the passwords of every single human being alive.

Because every single human being alive, along the way in their day, runs in to multiple, global financial and data security companies, who let people sign in using only 8 characters.

Banks,
Financial institutions,
Government complexes,
Global internet corporations,

these fields are predominated by companies whose passwords involve as little as 8 characters.

And there's no way, anybody could ensure, therefore ultimately I guess insure, those accounts were trustworthy

unless
they
could

P
R
O
V
E
it.

They PROVE: EVERY single DAY: that the story about 8, 10, 12, 16 character passwords being untrustworthy is - functionally - urban legend.

If what you allege were really true, we'd all know about the stories released to the press: about how, a lot of peoples' shorter passwords are getting hacked; while others in the same database weren't.

The world's financial
military,
law enforcement
and global database security professionals prove - it's vapor ware, the claim of longer passwords enhancing networks' security.

If it weren't vaporware, the bank wouldn't issue an option for Obama and Michelle, the Governors of States, the Chairman of the Fed, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates,

the option of choosing an 8/10/12 character password.

They just wouldn't. Plus we know that analysis is correct,

*because they DO issue them and there IS no such thing as an underground of celebrity stalkers, who crack powerful peoples' passwords because they used an 8 or 10 character pass code.

Bloviating bullshooting, lying bloggers, can make themselves seem like they're geniuses.

They'll scream about how you just can't possibly argue with their spaghetti graphs, and their lists of statistics, and claim you're just anti science, if you don't believe that bullsh** story.

But there's only one muthaf***a on earth or in space, who can be trusted, not to lie to you, about what's really happening.

And that's to just check with what's really happening.

-----------------
It SEEMS to be a VERY compelling argument. If a longer phrase is just as easy to type, why not use it?

The answer is because consumers consistently, accidentally lock themselves out, using longer phrases and pass codes.

The problem compounds itself when people are given the option to use many long pass phrases or codes, and they don't know how to index the phrases, based on something that won't change over time, so they start using a favorite phrase everywhere.

The problem is exacerbated in another kind of situation: personal security.

People are legendary for forgetting how to even walk well when under heavy stress, losing high heels, tripping and splitting open their faces or spraining the sh** out of their wrist, simply because there was a loud noise, or some kind of sudden temporary, frightening distraction.

Hurriedly typing some long string into a pass code station over and over because one is stressed, because Mr Jenkins in 268 just flatlined, is the stuff they're trying to avoid.

Having somebody get away with some heinous sh*t,
because one was shaking while trying to type in

!"Abracadabra" Shouted The Paige! isn't charming.

It's a sign someone in charge of passwords, didn't get the message.

Longer passwords lead to accidental lockouts.

Longer passwords don't lead to greater network robustness.

Longer passwords do lead to problems past the time lost on the lockouts themselves, and can lead to there being some kind of real problem.

More examples like Mr Jones kicking the bucket aren't needed; there are other cases where it's simply impractical to enter long passwords.

Many password consoles are outside. You're not going to be wanting to type in some sonnet from Longfellow when 4 other people are trying to get in out of the driving rain.

Ok so:

Science, is when you take your mathematical data and your statistics and your claims, and you compare them to reality, and you then honor reality: not try to claim reality doesn't understand wtF's really real.

Nonsense is when you take your mathematical data and your statistics and your claims, and you compare them to reality, and you then issue a statement declaring that reality doesn't understand itself. And that if it did understand itself, it would agree with the consensus.

Nothing persuades like an obviously comprehensive & detailed understanding of what's being discussed.

This post hasn't got anything to do with whether a particular individual should put a long, or short pass phrase, in a particular place.

When you're at home, you can do whatever you want.

When you're at work, you're gonna be constrained not only by the technologies available but their applicability in the environment.

Furthermore you should be constrained about the chance of revealing that you might be some kind of wise ass hacker type, the locals can't stand the sight of;

not just because of the reliance on overly comfortable footware, - but due to somebody having gotten their hands on one of the company credit cards and made them have to go through a bunch of needless bullsh*t.

Also the zany headgear.
Maybe, that too.

[if you're not really sure where the sarc: on/off tags go in this don't worry, I'm not sure I could tell, and I wrote it. If it troubles you, you're probably not mature enough for this thread, even if you're 80. The length of your password doesn't get you in, here: it's whether the password you have, can stand being exposed to spooky dark web sh** and not break.]

This isn't going to be the end because I have been reviewing the way the thread's been going and I think there's something I can explain about why I wrote the first post, the way I did.

Also, When I started the thread I was really doing it to distract myself from something I had going on, that was getting my goat.

While that hasn't really gotten ironed out, I did indeed start thinking about several relevant things so what people have to read, doesn't turn out to be purely old fogey-ware;

talking 'bout how back way back when,
when the wires were made outta wood,
and how in the summer time, they'd dry out:
and you couldn't get no pitchers & news no more outta the wires,
cause they was froze up.

And how them men,
would go along in a wagon under the wires,
with a wagon pulled by a horse;
with a big barrel of mineral water and a sprayer,
with a long handle in the back,
to wet the wires,
and make em conduct ether net again.
And also some of that bona fide 'old timey' music
what the people down to the Pandora, sing's into the can:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZtgZ5fHOuU

I saw sadpanda talking somewhere about the Dark Web and I was kinda wanting to use that phrase.

I was wishing I wasn't retired so I could go to work tomorrow and confide to somebody that I'd

''spent the night 'on the Dark Web' with

'some other Anonymous People' who are also

'interested in the cultivation techniques and terpene profiles' of

'hybridized, high-potency, hydroponic marijuana' for

'The Dark Marketplace',

so we could

'help finance our mutual pact,'

involving

'the vow we made to each other many years ago'
over the internet,

to

'overgrow the government',

and

'overgrow the world.''

And just see what they said when I casually dropped that sh** on em right there around the donuts and communal coffee station.

And then I thought... hey I work for the police department. I better keep that shit

'on the 'Down Low.'

LoL.

(Spoiler: I don't really work for the police dept.)

This is what I do, and it works great, as long as your the type to trust their network!

Its a program called 1password, you have just 1 master password for it, and then create login and password profiles for each of your accounts. It has a key generator and you choose how many characters (up to 30) plus how many symbols and numbers. I have it generate a different password for each account that is crazy complex. Looks like this (WxYDRZ3UVHkvrMGHU3L8). It is synced up with your browser so you just one click the account in the program and it loads the site and logs you in. I realized how bad my security was after I actually entered all my accounts (had close to 60 logins on all kinds of sites) and I could never remember the password so was constantly answering security questions that were 10 years old and I couldn't get right. I would try to use the same password but each one has slightly different requirements so my password evolved from basic to include a capital letter and then a number. Pretty soon I was always getting them mixed up especially if I hadn't used that site in a while. Now my online "life" is secure and organized and I don't play the guessing and reseting game.

Like I said this is a good option as long as you trust this company, its network and servers and cloud to not get hacked. There business is password security so I would think hackers would pick a easier target or site of which there is aplenty.

I just keep a text file with all my monikers and passwords.

So ... if you have a 'JBG' in your password, does that stand for Jamaican Bat Guano, or Johnny B. Gomez ?

If you use the initials of pro athletes in your password, that's a start.

I keep my backup password file in a Van down by the River


I don't think I'd want to remember my primary passwords. Too complicated.

JBG...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFo8-JqzSCM

So I guss12345678 just won't cut it huh?...Yeehaw