I want to share my Gmail password with y’all. Well, the circumstances from which I derived it and its nature. It is derived from a brief incident that occurred 47 years ago in the presence of people I have not seen since that time, and is based on a specialty item in a food order placed at a business that no longer exists. It’s a simple lil 60-character phrase that I can easily recall, distorted by upper-lower case letters, symbols and numbers according to a formula I devised for that password.
Have fun breaking into my Gmail account, folks!
Oh, BTW, I did insert one teensy lil contrafactual bit into the password, just to keep cracking the thing fun.
Yes, yes I know that “cracking” (really “guessing”) my password is only one way to break into my account. Try some of the others, mmmK?
BTW, even the strongest of passwords isn’t really much good as a means of securing things on otherwise insecure platforms/environments.
BTW#2: All the obscurity and pseudo-complexity described above? Misleading. THE single most important feature of strong passwords is LENGTH.
[King Roland has given in to Dark Helmet’s threats, and is telling him the combination to the “air shield”]
Roland: One.
Dark Helmet: One.
Colonel Sandurz: One.
Roland: Two.
Dark Helmet: Two.
Colonel Sandurz: Two.
Roland: Three.
Dark Helmet: Three.
Colonel Sandurz: Three.
Roland: Four.
Dark Helmet: Four.
Colonel Sandurz: Four.
Roland: Five.
Dark Helmet: Five.
Colonel Sandurz: Five.
Dark Helmet: So the combination is… one, two, three, four, five? That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! That’s the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!
(From : Spaceballs)
Well, when the TSA is as likely as n ot to simply break the locks, 1-2-3-4-5 may be as good a luggage password as any. . .
BTW, love Spaceballs.
My work computers passwords were a explanation of a picture near my desk, it went something like this.
Thereare2guys&5fish+1dogintheboatonthelake.
All I had to do was look at the picture and the password was remembered.
When the quarterly password changing came around, the picture was changed and a new password was developed from the picture.
One can do a variation on this with just about anything not just pictures. For example, a password hint from a book on your desk would go something like this,
Bobgavemethegreenbookwith269pages&his2kidsaremike+mary
These are easy to remember and hard for others to guess.
But there is always the XKCD method of retrieving someones password with a wrench.
I have always ascribed to the pass phrase password technique. I do have a rather predictable tendency to choose pass phrases from 400 year old art songs, though. I try to fight it.
The XKCD password retrieval system does work, but one needs to have physical access to the holder of the password and be careful to not break the password holder before obtaining the password. . .