{"id":77,"date":"2008-05-14T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2008-05-14T07:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=77"},"modified":"2008-05-13T22:48:47","modified_gmt":"2008-05-14T05:48:47","slug":"this-strong-password-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=77","title":{"rendered":"This Strong Password Thing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently made the rounds and changed all the passwords I use. Experts say that you should do so every three months. I was overdue.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nIn the old days, I used passwords based on license plates of cars I used to own. For example (and I&#8217;m making the numbers up), say I once drove an old beater with a license plate of <code>JBS 887<\/code>. That combination of letters and numbers then became my password: <em>jbs887<\/em>. But today that would be considered a weak password, which is why I &#8220;retired&#8221; all those passwords years ago.<\/p>\n<p>How do you know what makes for a weak password? In a word: <em>monotony<\/em>. Or rather, it is <em>variety<\/em> that makes for a strong password. Specifically you need a mix of these things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Length; at least 8 characters, preferably more<\/li>\n<li>A mixture of letters and numbers<\/li>\n<li>At least one upper case letter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The password <code>jbs887<\/code> is weak because it&#8217;s only 6 characters long and lacks an upper case letter. It&#8217;s a good password, just not for today.<\/p>\n<p>To guage how well you can dream up a password, you can visit this Password Checker site:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/protect\/yourself\/password\/checker.mspx\" target=\"else\">http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/protect\/yourself\/password\/checker.mspx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just type in a sample password and the web page reports back to you on its strength.<\/p>\n<p>Being strong, of course, isn&#8217;t enough; while <code>RL5ct984QqyZwXp9<\/code> is a doozy of a strong password, who wants to type that in several times a day let alone remember it?<\/p>\n<p>My solution is to use words and number connectors. For example, my old car was a Dakota truck and I like the number 366 for some reason. This password <code>366Dakota<\/code> is considered <em>Strong<\/em> by the Password Checker web site (above), but the password <code>Dakota366truck<\/code> is considered <em>Best<\/em>. It&#8217;s also not that much of a pain to remember or even type.<\/p>\n<p>Most people don&#8217;t take their passwords seriously, well unless their employer or some program demands a strong password. I&#8217;m continually surprised at the number of people who use passwords like <code>password<\/code> or <code>secret<\/code> or <code>1111<\/code> or something equally weak. Take the time and give yourself a strong, memorable password. Do it now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently made the rounds and changed all the passwords I use. Experts say that you should do so every three months. I was overdue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}