TABLE OF CONTENTS Let s face it; passwords aren t going away anytime soon. Because no matter how much the world s authentication technology advances, chances are it will in some way always depend on a secret that only you know. Meanwhile, password-cracking methodologies will advance, and computers will become increasingly more powerful. You really won t be able to get away with your cupcake55 or beachbum passwords for much longer. You need to learn how to build strong passwords that you can conveniently live with. By convenience, I mean a password that you can easily remember and type easily and quickly.
When my youngest son was five years old, he had a 15-character password for our computer. He had to because that was my policy even on my home network. Sure, that seems rather extreme for a home network, but I am a security consultant, so it is my job to keep up with the best security practices, even if it is at home. I am not worried about anyone cracking my son s password; it s just my policy, and everyone follows it. My family may hate it, but they follow it.
My son remembered his password just fine and had no trouble typing it in to the computer. What was his password? It was the letter O typed 15 times. He happened to like the letter O, and he could count to 15 so that was his password. The point is that he found a password that met my policy requirements yet...
