Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!ittvax!swatt From: swatt@ittvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: a thought about UNIX login security Message-ID: <790@ittvax.UUCP> Date: Thu, 16-Jun-83 15:52:44 EDT Article-I.D.: ittvax.790 Posted: Thu Jun 16 15:52:44 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jun-83 00:12:27 EDT Lines: 24 One method I've used to pick passwords is to take the first letter from each word in some random phrase in a magazine advertisement. This has the advantage that it almost never looks like an english word, and hence cannot be produced by pseudo-english generators. It has the disadvantage that advertisements tend to generate short (5-6 word) slogans, so the resulting password is subject to exhaustive search. To cure this, take the first letter from each word in a line of your favorite poem: "I must go down to the sea again": imgdttsa "Fog creeps in on little cat feet": fciolcf "There was a young man from Nantucket": twaymfn and so on. Another method is take trade names backwards: "Coca-Cola" becomes "alocacoc". A friend of mine once wrote a filter which read standard input, and only passed to standard output words with successive letters on opposite sides of the standard keyboard (so you could type it faster). He called it "baf" for "Back And Forth". - Alan S. Watt