8 Killer Ways of Choosing a Strong Password for Your Accounts

A Good and Wise Password is one that’s Hard to guess for others, yet easy to remember for yourself – Characters, Numbers, Titles etc. Practicing password safety is quite challenging. Computer users may have several passwords for many different websites and software. Passwords can be classified into two views :

• Myth: If it is Encrypted, It is secure.
• Truth: If it is not Encrypted, It is not secure.

Here are some tips for making your passwords more secure. These includes most common strategies while choosing  a password, still I want to bring them under limelight as the more secure a password, the less likely someone will be able to “crack” it. Using password safety techniques will help keep your computer and your files safe. The stats are very rough estimates. For comparison purposes, an 8-character password is used for most calculations !

Personal Credentials

People mostly use this as their renowned trademarks i.e. their personal information as their password. This method always works as none of the outsiders can guess any of your personal living stuff but you can easily remember your own details as you live up with it everyday. The info includes -

• Your Name, Initials, Location (Zip code), Birthday, Pets
• Family/Friend’s names (including Maiden), Locations, Birthdays
• Word/Number combinations of any of the above.
• Ego Related. Examples : Guru, Master, Wizard
• Favorite/Interests : Music (Band Name, Albums), Fiction/Non-fiction/Comic books/Characters/ Movie/TV/Cartoon Characters & Titles

Categories

I’ve seen many people using repeated words in their passwords. You can say, ‘Dupliwords‘ But these passwords can be easily spotted by someone while you’re typing. Some of them include -

• Double-words. Examples : kittykitty, lovelove
• Funny/Jargon words. Examples: wassup, roflol, ssshhhh, bzzzzz
• Insults. Examples: suckitout, eatdirty, biteme
• Keyboard Sequences. Examples: qwerty, zxcvbn, asdfg, qazwsx
• Reversals. Examples: dorwssap, terces, wordpass, uoyevoli

Mixed-Case Dictionary Words

If a word has 2 letters, there’s 4 (2²) ways to capitalize it. Suppose the word is ‘at’. The ways to capitalize it are : at, At, aT and AT. If a word has 8 letters, there’s 256 ways. Similar combinations (2^letters) apply to each word in the dictionary. There’s around 32,000 8-letter words, which gives 8 million (32,000 x 256) mixed-case 8-letter passwords. Some examples -

• paSSworD
• ilOvEYoU
• NoThINg
• wHAteVEr
• doNTdisTUrb

Mixed-Case Word with Numbers

Tacking on a number from 0-9 before or after a word gives 20 more variations to the password. Using 00-99 before or after the word, gives 200 variations. There’s some 19,000 6-letter words, and 243 million variations (19,000 x 64 x 200) of 6-letter-word 2-number passwords. Few of the examples are -

• 9fiNgeRS
• loVELy68
• 7wOndeRs
• cLouD9
• haTE143

Mixed-Case Words/Letters

You can combine words or extra lines to create a really long and tough password. We’re talking pretty big numbers here. Around 53 trillion (52⁸) 8-letter mixed-case passwords i.e. aaaaaaaa, aaaaaaaA, aaaaaaAa, . . . ZZZZZZZZ ! Examples include -

• GUessTHis
• BiKeFisH
• wHatTheHeLL
• SHutuP
• hATeLovE

Mixed-Case Words-Numbers-Letters

The most difficult and yet easy to be cracked passwords. These are usually generated by automated systems online. You can create a hell-a-long passwords with the combinations of words, numbers and letters. OK, My mind’s swimming now, there’s somewhere around 218 trillion (62⁸) 8-letter/number passwords and it takes an average of 5 seconds to crack this kind of password on a Windows machine, considerably longer on BSD or Linux.

Any Ethical Hacker can crack these kind of passwords using Brute Force Techniques/Apps. (It is a trial and error method used by application programs to decode encrypted data such as passwords or Data Encryption Standard (DES) keys, through exhaustive effort (using brute force) rather than employing intellectual strategies.) The best examples are of this type -

• No50WaY2
• puT863MoX
• H4x0rD00dZ
• UR2good4Me
• FXR1stR8

Random Characters

Some programs and services only allow letters and numbers, some include dashes ‘-’, the best allow of any character. It depends on the online/offline system whether they accept special characters as password or not. But you can anytime use an underscore or hyphen in your password. It makes it more strong. Assuming 94 ‘type-able’ characters, there’s 6 gazillion (94⁸ = 6.1 quadrillion [US]) different 8-character passwords. Well these kind off passwords can be of any type, still also some examples of it -

• k38#0J$dA
• qs3UIs82
• tt09@n5Lx$

Shrink Phrase for a Short Form

This is my best trick to create a strong password and I’m sure you are going to love it. And the password will be related to your personal life’s experience or memory. I would suggest to create a password of at least 8 characters in length, at least 1 number along with a special character like # or % or @ and both uppercase & lowercase letters.

Passwords with difficult combinations make it harder for password cracking tools to figure out your password. The way to create is, take out a phrase from your day-to-day life, like say ” Sister went to Las Vegas in 2011!“. You can create a password from this by using the first letters of the phrase which can be “SiswtLVi11!“ Avoid using words or phrases that could be found in a dictionary or easily guessed.

In general No Password is uncrackable. The best you can do is make it difficult and non-trivial to determine your password. What’s the worst password? The one you’ve forgotten  Whatever method you choose, it’s a good idea to change your password often.

The more important the password, the more often it should be changed. Why? If someone is attempting a brute-force attack on your password, the hope is that you’re changing it to something they’ve already tried and found to be wrong.

Well you can check How much Secure your Password is through their official site : HOW SECURE IS MY PASSWORD ? I have made my password strong enough that it would take million of years to be cracked What about you ?