TFN#53: 🪜How strong is your password? Check and generate memorable passwords

The first time I came across the concept of a real computer password was when I was around 16 years old. That password set by my father, got so popular in our family that we still use some version of that password even for our home WiFi. And that password is good enough for us.

But a few years back, I came across an infographic resembling this:

It was shocking!
No matter how much I might have tried to protect my online passwords, one wrong website and I’d be done for.

With most of our knowledge work happening over the internet, it is important to have strong and memorable passwords. (Especially if you’re not using a specialized password manager)

So, that’s what I want to converse about today:

Checking the strength of the password
Generating new memorable passwords

But before that

We have to understand that not all websites and passwords need to be super-secured. If you’re using some free services, you can use a temporary email such as https://10minutemail.com/ (I will be writing a letter on this)

What type of accounts should you review?

Your main Google Account password
Your iCloud Account password
Your Net Banking password
Any work-related cloud database password

Check your password strength

This website I’m talking about checks your password strength, it doesn’t store. It calculates the strength of your password offline. You can check by disconnecting the internet connection.

Step-1: Go to https://www.passwordmonster.com
Step-2: Type your password and see the password cracking time

I entered my home WiFi password, the time it will take is: 0.35 seconds!

I’m relaxed because not all passwords should be treated equally.

It displays that my password has 10 characters, containing lowercase letters and numbers.

But for important things, we need to keep a secure password.
For example, this is the strength of one of my important cloud database passwords:

Once you have checked your important passwords, and you want to change them, you can generate memorable passwords.

Generating strong and memorable passwords

There are many free websites that offer this facility, you can use whichever you like. But one that I found useful is this one:

1Password Generator

Once you go to this page, you can generate passwords. I chose a “memorable password” with 4 word counts.

You can generate as many passwords as you want.

Let’s check the strength of this generated password:
athens-furbish-toweling-ions

Whooooaaahh!
This 28-character password password would take 793,000,000,000 years for a computer to crack. Impressive.

But what if the website mandates you to use special characters, numbers and upper case letters?

Simple, use some sort of standard memorable sequence as a prefix or a suffix.

For example, I like this memorable password we generated.
But the website mandates me to use:

At least one upper-case letter
At least one number

So, I will modify the password like this:
$2024Athens-furbish-toweling-ions

And the password strength?
Let’s check:

That’s 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 years!

Final notes

It goes without saying that we need to keep passwords unique and never reuse them across important websites.
Substituting special characters in words is not a smart move if the overall password is an English dictionary word:
For example: @dm!n
Hackers are aware of this practice and the algorithms check the possibility of substitution a million times per second and crack it.

If you’re surprised by the demise of your favourite password after checking its strength, cry a river, build a bridge and get over it.
We need strong passwords more than ever.
Hit Reply and share any password-related poor practices you may have observed in your personal or work life.

Reads of the week:

What happens when we want to discuss some taboo topics in the business world? That’s what Jessica, the co-founder of the billion-dollar startup accelerator YC talks about in this essay.
Jessica makes the case that the culture has taken some subjects off the table. This costs the world the insights that would fuel innovation, solutions and better lives.
I get it when she says this, because the culture, the world is hell-bent on its current belief that you can’t risk expressing or discussing what you observe.