Change your Passwords!

Wow, sometimes I learn something great that's so simple, it makes me feel stupid for not having thought of it before.

This time it's something written in a blog post by Robert Hensing about how you should not use passwords. Instead, he says use PASSPHRASES! A typical password for your windows/email/blah login might be "t0b1n996", but apparently this is very easily cracked by brute force despite being hard to remember and looking complicated!

A typical passphrase is virtually uncrackable by brute force and is much easier to remember. An good example might be "And she's buying a stairway to heaven", which is longer than the recommended 14 characters.

So, the general idea is to use long passphrases rather than short complex passwords. Simple eh!? I'm off to go and uypgrade all my passwords!... And, I'm off to update all my login forms/pages columns to say "Please enter your passphrase", rather than "Please enter your password". Then I'm gonna get out more 8-)

As an aside, this approach reminded me of how I need to apply lateral thinking techniques more often. I'm pretty sure that the label "password" is responsible for ones tendency to chose single words over long phrases. I should have challenged that lable a long time ago!