{"id":78498,"date":"2015-11-11T21:13:49","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T02:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbach.net\/blog\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2021-11-28T16:11:03","modified_gmt":"2021-11-28T21:11:03","slug":"a-new-cure-for-passwords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/a-new-cure-for-passwords\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Cure for Passwords"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>Regular readers of Bach Seat<\/strong><\/a> know that passwords<\/a> suck. The better a password is, the harder it is to remember. So most people just end up choosing passwords they think are safe, but are pretty bad (rb-<\/em><\/strong> I have covered<\/a> crappy<\/a> passwords<\/a> many times). <\/em>University of Southern California<\/a> researchers Marjan Ghazvininejad<\/a> and Kevin Knight<\/a>, have come up with a new solution that they believe solves the crappy password problem.<\/p>\n

\"unique<\/a>The USC researchers’ paper \u201cHow to Memorize a Random 60-Bit String<\/a>\u201d (PDF) presents a unique solution for creating passwords that are hard to crack and relatively easy to remember: randomly generated poems<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The researchers believe that the most secure and memorable method for creating a strong password is a short rhyming poem of random words<\/strong>. The Washington Post<\/em> explains<\/a> that, even if you pick a fairly uncommon word, like “Troubadour,” and replace some of the letters with other symbols, this combination might only take a computer seconds, minutes, or hours to guess.<\/p>\n

\"short<\/a>The idea of a short rhyming poem of random words as a password might seem a little odd, but they’re actually very, very secure according to USC’s Knight. At current speeds, he estimates that cracking these rhyming poems of random words passwords would take around 5 million years. By which point, we probably won’t be using Facebook anymore.<\/p>\n

As part of their research, the USC team created their poems by assigning every word in a 327,868-word dictionary a distinct code. The article explains they then use a computer program to generate a very long random number<\/strong>, like
\n110111000111100100100010100010101100001100010000010010100100, and <\/b>break that number up into pieces, and then translate those pieces into two short phrases<\/strong> of four or five words. The computer program they use ensures that the two lines end in words that rhyme and that the phrase is in iambic tetrameter<\/a>, like so:<\/p>\n

A techno salmon Benedict
\n\"Even<\/a>performing under derelict<\/p>\n

or:<\/p>\n

The baby understand curtailed
\na wooden synagogue prevailed<\/p>\n

or:<\/p>\n

The Oracle email update
\nequipment pinning demonstrate<\/p>\n

rb-<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While seemingly nonsensical quips like\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Whereas Chanel control McQueen <\/em>
\naccusing glamour magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

don’t make a lot of sense to 21st-century humans, we should be able to recall 7 or 8 words to better protect our personal information. \u00a0The oral record is how most information passed from human to human for generations before Guttenberg<\/a>. Someone told you something and you remembered it. There are a number of oral traditions that have lasted in one form or another into the 21st century.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

One big problem with the rhyming poem of random words idea is the webserver operating systems. There are a number of web servers out there that cannot take passwords longer than 12 characters. Hey, webmasters wake up<\/strong> – Update your operating systems<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The researchers have set up an online generator for these poem\/password, which you can try here <\/a>or you can enter your e-mail here<\/a>, and their program will send you a poetic password.<\/em><\/p>\n

Related articles<\/h6>\n