this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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Pass PHRASES are much better anyway.
Nobody's gonna remember "pyf85ruGmmgรฆ&Oy_w48euaT0lt" so they'll either write it down, save it to their browser,or use a password manager, either of which makes it less secure.
On the other hand, something simple that doesn't necessarily make sense, say "AlmondsMakeFineGrenades" is difficult for both humans and machines to guess, but easy to remember.
Tl;Dr: an xkcd comic explaining it much better than I just did ๐
Until you get hit with a dictionary attack.
Luckily this isn't really viable today as most logins just block you after like 5 attempts.
~~only sucks when you have 6 passwords and don't remember which one~~
As I explained to the other one, no dictionary attack will happen upon that exact combination of words any faster than the keyboard mashing preceding it.
Using a COMMON word or a COMMON phrase would leave you vulnerable, sure, but no prediction process is going to happen on the exact combination.
Hell, add a word or two to "SaltyIceteaMaker" and it would make an extremely secure pass phrase. For something without that string in the user id, of course ๐
The main advantage of a password manager is that you can have a different password for each account. Which means in case of a leak you won't be in risk of losing other accounts.
And I don't think I want to remember 300 pass phrases with different words.
Except it's the opposite: if someone gets the master password for your password manager, that's all of them.
~~That's another advantage of the pass phrase over the easily remembered password: repeating an uncrackable passphrase doesn't pose the risk that repeating a guessable password.~~
~~You can use RentMauriceHouseHurryNow for all your accounts and they'll all be safer than a billion different strings protected by a single guessable master password.~~
Especially if you're not in the tiny minority of people who actually knows a Maurice who isn't called The Space Cowboy by some people.
Using the same password (no matter how secure it is) for all accounts is a bad idea.
Assuming you have at least 20 accounts with sensible data, and you don't even remember that 5 of them exist.
Now shittywebsite.xy gets hacked and all data is unencrypted and unhashed.
So now your.email@adress.com with yourSecu4ePassPhrase is leaked.
You now quickly try to change the password on 15 accounts with the same email and password. But you forgot the 5 accounts you made years ago. Now after some time hackers login into the the old accounts and get your credit card info or whatever.
Great idea!
Yes my password manager is a single point of failure, but it is one I personally control and have the view over.
Good point.
A series of pass phrases that you can remember yourself is still better than relying on a password manager that can ALSO expose all of your passwords, none of which you remember.