Re: Suggested "safe" password length

[Hollis Johnson <hollis () cisco com>]

Ashish. I don't have a pw-length recommendation. However, I've heard that 
windows only uses the first 8 characters -- of course, someone may correct me.

Everything I've read concurs with Simon on coming up with strong passwords. 
I've read in several places (,maybe many) about coming up with passwords 
from a phrase and doing some substitution -- From my experience travelling 
last week, for instance --

O'hare airport is a horrible place to spend the night.

0'a1aHP2stn

A "translation" of the first letter of each word -- includes upper and 
lower; numbers, even a non-alpha-number character. And trust me, I'll 
remember that phrase for a long time :-)

The lastest stats I read were under 4 seconds if the word was in the 
dictionary, even with minor substitutions. Whereas something like this was 
not cracked in a a few days.

Good luck !!



At 11:30 AM 11/14/2003 +0000, Simon Gray wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > I wanted to have an idea about what should be the suggested range of
> > password lengths and if there is any upper bound.
> > I was told that there is a range upto which your password is encrypted
> > and beyond which the characters are futile. I work on a linux environment
> > with md5 encryption of passwords enabled.
>
>
> I would of thought at least 8-10 characters (this does depend on what the
> password is authenticating you to? (Nuclear reactor? or your gym locker?))
> You may want to enforce say at least 1 numeric, and 1 uppercase and maybe 1
> lower case in that. Should also try to get your users to avoid using
> dictionary words, even such as hell0, or fr3d etc.. Something like
> 'IQyJ$4)xv&' or 'z46he+^6**' would be a pretty strong password since it has
> no real relevance to anything, however remembering that could be
> interesting. That's the price you've got to pay for password security.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Regards,
>
> Simon Gray
> Desktop Guardian Ltd
>
> Developers of Identrica
> mobile phone based authentication
> www.identrica.com
>
>
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The Presidio integrates PGP data encryption and XML Web Services security to 
simplify the management and deployment of PGP and reduce overall PGP costs 
by up to 80%.
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