It is fairly easy to play around with passwords for different accounts in the internet. Users mostly come up with a really confusing word-and-number combination. But the problem there is that it confuses even the users themselves. To make remembering easier, some people opt to reuse passwords from other accounts, or come up with the go-to password combination: name and birthday. It would not take very long for the computer and other people to guess this type of passwords.
So, what actually makes the most secure password? According to a report from Stuff New Zealand, a study has shown that the perfect password is made up of random and completely unrelated words, contrary to the alphanumerical combo most people use. Humans are not random, and randomness is hard to predict. Also, it can be quite a task to recall. But researchers from the University of South California may have come up with the solution.
Marjan Ghazvininejad and Kevin Knight have been inspired by a cartoon, which demonstrated how a password made of four random unrelated words, like 'correcthorsebatterystaple,' is harder to crack than other more complicated passwords. Plus, it is easier to remember the combination. Users may just make a story about a horse correctly using a battery and a staple. The cartoon is made by Randall Munroe of Xkcd.
Munroe has pointed out that even words, which are not commonly used, like 'troubadour,' spelled with the use of symbols to substitute letters, can be guessed by the computer in a matter of hours or even just a couple of minutes. The random-word combination suggested by Munroe has been found to be more secure. Knight and Ghazvininejad have also come up with a random-word combination method: short, little poems made of unrelated and rhyming words.
Poetry has been an age-old method to recall things more easily. This time, it can be used even for passwords. The two researchers have made a generator for these little poems, which may sound a bit crazy, but make secure passwords. Here is a sample stanza,
"The reigning Hagen journeyman believers mini minivan
And teaches scripture bungalow or celebrate or Idaho".
You may click here to try out the poem-password generator. Shorter passwords are found to be more secure, so it is only a matter of time before shorter versions are used for websites.
