this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Define 'strength'... against a dictionary attack? Brute force? Social engineering? 'forgotten password/recovery questions' hack? Stolen session cookie? Keyloggers?

If you're not aware of the above, take some time to learn about each of those things and how good security practices counter each one.

The question is kind of like, 'can you bake a cake?' .. probably yes, but it's really missing a lot of essential information, like what kind of oven, what ingredients do you have, what's your skill level, do you have arms, etc.

Any 'passphrase' can be secure or insecure, depending on the other surrounding factors. 2FA solves many security weaknesses.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I tend to use random lines of code that don’t make much sense.

For example:

W0rds::Format(a[0],b[9])->Render(delta);

Lengthy, memorable, incorporates numbers, special characters, upper and lowercase.

The challenge is having to type it in on phones or other devices not a computer.

I don’t currently use a password manager, but I probably should.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I use a short passphrase that I made up that only I and my husband know. It consists of numbers, a special character, a word, and more numbers.

Then whatever I'm logging in to, my password consists of something relevant to the thing, with my passphrase appended to it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

I use a leetified (using my own custom flavor) passphrase as my master password - I can type it really quickly and it's obscure as hell so I'm happy with it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@[email protected] Why would the passphrase being long defeat the purpose of using it. That's half the purpose of using passphrases.
Make sure to use made up words or proper nouns and put a pin in an unexpected place. That's an easy way to change it without replacing the whole passphrase

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I was thinking it would be easy to brute force if just instead of guessing character by character you do word by word...but I guess just adding one special character randomly would make it a non issue.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

There are a lot more words than there are characters, even including special characters, so if it is actually randomly generated from a large dictionary, a passphrase is much harder to guess

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Brute force is only a thing when either they have the password hash, or the login portal is susceptible to brute force (ie shite). Both cases are rare.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

No, I just memorize the proper password.

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