Posts Tagged ‘Work’

After finally feeling well enough to not roll over and die I RD’d in and was presented with my friendly reminder from the domain that I’ve been too lazy to previously update my password and must now do so or face banishment. I also realized that the way I pick passwords might help my Dad create secure passwords and actually be able to remember them. Microsoft’s password policies are pretty insane so it helps there too.

Dad,
Here’s how to pick your passwords:

• So I first pick a word or phrase. For starters it could be a word that describes the institution the password is for. Say it’s your bank, greedybastards or perhaps for a dating site, romantic. Though in practice it’s probably better to pick a subject you’re interested in and pick from its lexicon. I usually go for stars and constellations…
• Next pick a letter or two to capitalize.
  greedybastards == GreedYbastards and romantic == RoMantic
• Next pick a letter or two to replace with a number.
  GreedYbastards” == GreedYb45tards and RoMantic == R0Ma7tic
• Finally replace a letter with a symbol, I usually pick the last letter of the word or phrase but sometimes if the password is short add on a symbol at the end starting with 1/!.
  GreedYb45tards == GreedYb45tard% and R0Ma7tic == R0Ma7tic!
• If you have the option set for your password to expire regularly, now when you need to change your password simply move to the next symbol.
  GreedYb45tard% == GreedYb45tard^ and R0Ma7tic! == R0Ma7tic@
• After you’ve gone through 3-9 symbols change the base word or phrase. How often you change the word is really dependent on how lazy you are and how secure you feel you need to be with the data you’re protecting.

I haven’t yet found a single password service or application that really makes life any simpler. So for now picking different passwords for each login and using a word or phrase that reminds of you what the login is for in the first does make it a little easier. Yes I know, it sucks Dad… You could always not worry and use the same password everywhere and make it something really simple that you’ll never forget. But then ask yourself what happens when it becomes compromised once. You have to go and update it everywhere and that sort of thing will happen more often than not.

Hopefully this will help since it really is a pain in the ass resolving your router issues because you’ve forgotten the password.