Nowadays, most people use password managers (hopefully). However, there are still some passwords that you need to memorize, like master password (for a password manager), phone lock, wifi password, etc.
Security wise, can passphrase reach the strength of a good password without getting so long that it defeats the purpose of even using it?
Yes, I use passphrases for stuff like my password manager, my computer login, and my disk encryption. For my login (which I type a lot) it’s four words; for occasional stuff like disk encryption it’s six. I’m sold on the argument that a passphrase is way easier to memorize compared to a comparably-secure random password.
The number of possible passphrases is the number of words in the dictionary you use to generate passphrases raised to the power of the number of words in your passphrase (assuming a small chance of reusing the same word in a passphrase). I use this command to generate a random phrase using my stock OS word list:
grep -v '[^a-z]' $WORDLIST | shuf --random-source=/dev/urandom | head -n5 | paste -sd ' 'grep -v '[^a-z]' $WORDLISTfilters out words with apostrophes or other weirdness. On my system the filtered list is 77,866 words.For four words, 77,866 ^ 4 ≈ 3.7 × 10^19 possible passphrases.
Compare that to randomly-generated passwords. I’ll assume that random lowercase & uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols add up to 46 characters. The number of combinations is 46^n where n is the length of the password. A four-word passphrase is the same order of magnitude as secure as a 12-character password, which has about 9 × 10^19 possible combinations.
I’m sure that if you make up your own passphrases instead of randomly generating them then the security is much lower.
Very similar heuristic here, insofar as when to use passphrases and how long.
LUKS and Bitlocker volumes get 8 words, computer logins usually get 4 words (potentially more depending on frequency/criticality of system).
Smartcards and mobile devices do have numeric pins due to frequency of use and relative difficulty in copying those for offline attacks.
Websites that are filled in w/ password manager get passwords get the random symbol-laden strings that ‘meet requirements’
correct horse battery staple?
All I see is “****************************?”
What did you type?
you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
This guy hunts.
I found it amusing when the security team in my company sent me parts of my password in plaintext saying it was insecure (because it didn’t have special characters in it) and recommended I use a password manager
The account is used for the ancient VPN software and all of our ssh management tools
And windows login if you’re using windows.
Yeah good luck using a randomly generated password that you have to type in multiple times everyday
https://bitwarden.com/password-strength/
Test it here. Passphrases of 3 words take centuries to crack, without any numbers or capital letters. Passwords with numbers, capital letters, and symbols need ~14 characters to be that secure. If you need to memorize it, a passphrase is far superior. Add in a number, or random capitalization, or a misspelling and your security goes even higher.
One caveat I’d want to note is for the underlying methodology that uses:
As this study by Joseph Bonneau attests, people frequently choose common phrases in addition to common words. zxcvbn would be better if it recognized “Harry Potter” as a common phrase, rather than a semi-common name and surname. Google’s n-gram corpus fits in a terabyte, and even a good bigram list is impractical to download browser-side, so this functionality would require server-side evaluation and infrastructure cost. Server-side evaluation would also allow a much larger single-word dictionary, such as Google’s unigram set.
As another example, the passphrase “This password is good” is claimed to take centuries to crack, but if the search space were narrowed down from a sequence of words to grammatically correct sentences, certain passphrases would be much weaker than this would show.
You should indeed use a password manager to randomize the generated password phrases. Bitwarden adds capitals, numbers and other characters to the password phrases.
I use an open source password manager and long random passwords for most things.
my master password is a long phrase though, as well as any I have to type personally sometimes. passphrases are so much easier to type as well
Sure. You can either increase the dictionary of possible words, or increase the number of words or both. Eventually it will become unwieldy. I don’t bother with passphrases though.
I generate passwords of sufficient entropy (random ASCII), store them securely (encrypted, key memorized, on dedicated hardware), and never re-use them. I don’t trust password managers unless open-source. I don’t need convenience – to some extent, it’s my job to manage other people’s secrets. Since I’m being paid, no need for shortcuts.
Same. Pass phrases seem like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist anymore. We don’t live in a world where people should be reusing and memorizing strong passwords. We live in a world with frequent user data theft and scams to glean your login info. Just last week, I started getting random login attempts from around the world for a Microsoft account I haven’t used in over a decade. No idea when or how that info got leaked.
And people aren’t equipped to memorize a different passphrase for all 30 of their accounts.
So, we should do what we always do: Get machines to make the issue easier for us to manage. Right now, that means password managers with a strong master password and secure storage.
In the future, maybe we’ll have some kind of creepy central government ID based password-less login method. Who knows?
Edit: Besides, most services require ThIrTeEn dIgIt lOnG PaSsWoRdS WiTh fIvE SpEcIaL ChArAcTeRs aNd sIx nOn-cOnSeCuTiVe dIgItS Of pI ThAt dOeSn’t mAtCh aNy kNoWn dAtE Or eVeNt oR SpEcIaL StRiNg oF NuMbErS. It’s just too annoying, and I’d have to memorize all the special characters in addition to the phrase.
OP kinda already addressed that. A password manager is great, but you still need a master password, so do you use a passphrase for that?
Yeah, I hate that. Forcing me to input special characters makes my password slightly less secure. Of course I’ll include them by default, but now an attacker can eliminate all passwords without special characters. Most people just put the number 1 or a period at the end of their existing, frequently re-used password anyway. Or capitalize the first or last letter. So it doesn’t make it really harder to crack dumb passwords.
It’s like we’ve optimized passwords to be hard for humans to remember, but easy for humans to guess!
Those government id based login methods are quite common and very secure. Belgium has a system that used your ID, your phone number and your phone to verify your login. A lot of EU banks have been using a OTP generated by a dedicated hardware that looks like a tiny calculator. The Netherlands has a dedicated app that is verified by your government id and that uses a qr to verify your identity.
They can be good quality, yeah. But I’m more worried about having to basically present a digital-equivalent of a driver’s license if I want to sign up for Netflix, or watch porn, or order food. And if ID system routes every request to a central location first, then you get stuck with de-facto tracking on everything you ever do, no matter how good the company’s privacy record is. That’s what I meant by creepy.
Thank God for GDPR. That would be impossible in the EU. ID’s can only used in very specific cases that are detailed in the law.
I use passphrases for frequently used logins and randomly-generated passwords of varying lengths for everything else. I also use a hardware key and/or 2FA for everything that allows it.
I’m conversationally fluent in a few different languages (enough to order food, greet people and ask directions to the shitter, anyway) and I can swear in another half-dozen languages so I tend to mix’n’match my passphrases with different foreign words. Bonus points for accented characters. That’s probably not gonna fool a dictionary-based attack but since I live in a (mostly) English-speaking country, it might make it interesting for the English-only speakers to try guessing.
At work, we’re held to the outdated policy set by the IT department so it can be difficult to be creative. On top of that, they force a password change whenever someone sneezes so I see a lot of sticky notes on monitors and under keyboards.
Edit: spelling and grammar.
I once had to change a password every 30 days.
And it couldn’t be a password I’d used before. Along with ridiculous requirements (but not as ridiculous as the 30 day thing).
You’d think it was a password to get into the NSA’s database or something.
Nope, just a (not very) random website.
For my personal life I use a password manager, like most people in this thread. For my master password I really want a secure password (LastPass really reinforced the value of that), so I use a passphrase that is then hashed using an algorithm I can do in my head, so it’s a long string of high entropy alphanumeric gibberish that I can remember easily.
At work my IT dept seems to be stuck 10 years in the past, so they have now implemented a policy that our passwords must be at least 16 characters. They keep ignoring my suggestions to get some form of corporate password manager, so I have my work passwords stored in a text file that I’m not allowed to have any form of file encryption so it just sits there in my documents folder. It’s probably not going to be the source of our company getting penetrated, but I don’t consider it secure.
I do like pass phrases because I find them easy to remember, but my current prime work one is really easy to make typos, so I now use the reveal password button more than I ever have before.
I do use passphrases, but I combine with randomness.
I memorize one random 8 character string to use with something more memorable.
Then when I need more security, or I feel that random 8 character string is no longer safe (password leak/hacked), I memorize a new 8 character string.
Then I combine them.
Then I memorize a new 8 character string and mix it in.
It’s a process built up over years that ingrains into memory. Sometimes I forget the order, or if i added spaces, or did no spaces. Luckily, as long as I am sure of the discrete segments, I can remix them to recreate until it works (in a reasonable time).
My last addition was when I made the move from Lastpass to another password manager, after their endless bad news.
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I have one that I like to imagine as secure as fully randomised passwords. It’s four words but, because I’m a cool pwnz0r, the second and last word are written in leetspeak. The phrase is super easy for me to remember and the leetspeak portion has become muscle memory by now. But I only use it for my password manager. For everything else it depends if there’s a good chance I’ll need to login via my phone (no pw manager there). If yes, I use one of my couple rather-safe passwords. If no, I’ll let KeePass2 go to town with a random one.
Oh and I’m subscribed to the haveibeenpwned leakletter, so i know as soon as possible when definitely to change my password.
It’s four words but, because I’m a cool pwnz0r, the second and last word are written in leetspeak
correct h0r53 battery 5t4p13?nah man
correct |-|0.-5€ battery 5+4|°|€
Use diceware to generate a nice long nonsense passphrase, and use that for your password manager master password. Keep it written down somewhere until you are sure you’ve memorized it.
I use diceware passphrases for any passwords I need to type in (ssh keys, logging in, decrypting my hard drive, master password for password manager, etc). It’s the most secure way of setting a password you have to remember and type. Especially since my auto generated passwords contain special characters I wouldn’t be able type without just using those ways of entering some escape sequence and typing a unicode sequence.
I use a passphrase in order to get into my password manager, but that’s it. Because my password manager handles all the rest of them and makes it way more random than I could ever dream of.
Bitwarden can generate password phrases. Some other password managers too. In the occasion you have to type out your password a password phrase is a lot easier.
How do you log in to your computer though?
Okay, I didn’t even think of that one, but yeah, I have two passwords. One logs me into the computer, and one logs me into my password manager.
Yes, on my password manager and computer logins. I love them because they are so easy to memorize and still secure enough to use in these scenarios. My Laptops are at home or with me. Someone cracking that is highly unlikely and I don’t want to look up and manually type random passwords from my PW manager every time. 1Password itself needs a second long password for new devices to login, so I’m not worried about that. Everything else has very long random passwords which I store in 1Password.
