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Make your passwords unbreakable.

We're surrounded by requests for passwords and just as many software methods to discover them. What are some easy steps that you can do to make your passwords harder to break?

Passwords should be at least six characters in length, using both letters and numbers. Trivial passwords include single words found in the dictionary, all numeric passwords, consecutive number or letter passwords, initials and birthdays, etc.

Non-trivial passwords include (1) two words together, (2) a mix of letters, characters, and/or numbers, and (3) a combination of two words together with another characters. Examples of non-trivial passwords are: picturedog, a2xy5&, picturemouse3, etc. The longer the password, the harder it becomes for password cracking software to solve. To give you an idea, current cracking software can find a 6 number password in 1 second using a Pentium III computer.

A single word password can be cracked in approximately 1 minute. A two word password such as picturedog would probably take 4 or more days using the computer power of 5 Pentium IIIs continuously for 24 hours a day. A password containing 2 words and 1 or more characters would take much longer than that, and would probably not be attempted because a search for an easier password would be made. Additionally, the same password should NOT be used for different systems or accounts.

How do you keep track of all of these passwords? Personally, I'm too cheap to cough up the money to buy a password keeping program. Instead, I use a simple MsWord trick. When you create MsWord files, you are provided the option to "lock" up the file itself with a password. I created a password file, innocently named, "mortgage data", and store all of my passowrds and accounts there. How to do this? Before you do a "FILE SAVE AS" in MsWord, you can see a selection called, "options". Click on this. Near the bottom of the new window that pops up are the "file sharing options" and two blank fields. Enter your passwords here and continue with the save. From here on out, you'll always be prompted to enter the password when opening the file. This provides an easy method of storing all of those passwords, somewhat securely, that are easy to forget.


Our thanks to Jeff for submitting this article.
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