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Passwords
"A good password is easy to remember, but hard to guess." (Armstrong)
The purpose of a mnemonic phrase is to allow the creation of a complex password
that will not need to be written down. Another example is "My grey cat is #14
years old and still going strong!" (Mgci#14yoasgs)
Here is a table of password examples rated from 1 (weak) to 4 (strong).
| Strength 1-4 |
Password Examples |
| 1 |
apple, jill, paper, asdf, 123456, jill34453 (zip code) |
| 2 |
@pplepie, (j!llAW), pap3rklipp |
| 3 |
Annz05R!, fryzbeE!!, sshELzB33r! |
| 4 |
Mgci#14yoasgs!, -fryzbeE!!Goff-, I got a new girl now, and
she's a lot like you. (use passphrase if system allows it) |
Password Strength Checker from Microsoft
Encryption
Encrypting files protects them in the event a malicious party gets ahold of
them. All encryption is only as strong as the password. 96 bit encryption is a
lot less strong than 256 bit. With a 256 bit encrtyption and a strong
password your data is virtually untouchable by any measure today. With a weak
password the file is still unreadable but with a small amount of effort and
technical prowes the file can be decrypted.
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| A metaphor: How is a home blend coffee similar to an encrypted file?
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| Water |
- |
Unencrypted file |
| Vanilla Beans |
- |
Password |
| Guatemala Beans |
- |
Salt (in cryptography terms) to flavor the password |
| Grinder (grind beans) |
- |
Key derivation function takes Password and Salt and grinds out a Key (hash) |
| Home Blend
|
- |
Key (hash) |
| Coffee Maker |
- |
Software for encrypting |
| Filter |
- |
Algorithm that passes the unencrypted file through the key to produce an encrypted file |
| Coffee |
- |
Encrypted file |
| Reverse the process to decrypt.
Easy, but without the password and salt, you may as well be making coffee into
water as decrypting a file.
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Final Word
In the old days a small selection of different skeleton keys was all a
locksmith needed to secure the neighborhood. A weak password is similar to a
skeleton key.. there is a limited number of them, making them easy to guess.
And if a computer is the one guessing and your password is something like
apple, it will probably figure it out in a few minutes @ 100,000 guesses per
minute.
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