bokuwaomar said: " Jun 26, 6:59pm

I use this website to generate passwords for maple and other things. I genearally go with the "63 random printable ASCII characters" whenever possible because my memory is just that good."

MissElwing said: " May 21, 2:27am

You didn't put the exact ones, and you really think most of the maple population is going to understand "alphanumeric"? Most of the time when i end up explaining even simple things like this to people on maple, i seriously have to word it out as simple and direct, as if speaking to a 6 year old.

Out of the few that actually read it, instead of calling it too long, a lot of kids will skin read, and miss that part, or have little knowledge as to what alphanumerical means, and likely not click the link.

But I'd rather not get into a debate on community here, and you still need to add, not to put "ilove-dates name-" as the password. Your examples only included not using multi of the same letter / number in a row, or a run of numbers / letters going up, not using single words such as "password" or your dates name, and a lot of kids will not connect to the fact, that whoever they're dating is still personal info.

I've had enough experience dealing with kids who think passwords like that are safe irl, and trying to explain to them why they lost their accounts, when they had passwords they thought were hard to guess."

Vespeh said: "Bit paranoid changing your PW so often. I haven't changed it once.

Best way to make sure your account stays safe is dont give out your info."

fenneck said: " May 23, 9:37am
I read your guide on password strength.
What I would do is go to this website.
link
It is a random string generator meaning that it can use any combination of letter and numbers. It is really good for passwords. What I would do is change the string a little so it can't be found."

Hastened said: "The best passwords have unicode or non-american symbols in it, do you know how long it would take for a rainbow hash to crack it? examples are the ü, ҉ , and ئ.

G'day"

hwan2189 said: "Best Password: ss8ss6f9w
Having two letters the same in the row makes people hard to notice that you typed the letter twice."

vipuladusa said: " May 24, 7:14am
Another tip. Don't use your basil/forum id as the same thing as your game ID. Many people knew Tiger's login that way, which is FierceTiger. Even if they know your id only, don't get too easy on it. People can easily use a bruteforce p/w cracker and get your password, and soon on, your pin and can then access the game. Hope I helped xP"

TrappaKeepa said: "Changing a password is not always the smartest thing to do. Some studies have shown that in workplaces where password changes were mandatory, people on average picked weaker passwords compared to places where there was no policy enforced. The added security from rotating passwords is negated by the fact that the passwords are easier to guess. Since any password is weak against social engineering, it is best to use a singe very strong password and guard it with your life. At least with a strong password, you'll be safe against guessing and other technological measures."

icemage07 said: "excellent guide...
the only problem is:

Hackers (not script kiddies/hacker wanna-bees) usually have their own password hack
program that would simply try all the combinations possible until they find the password.
(why do it manually if a computer can do it for you?)

I just made a simple program that tells the time required to hack one's password
(yea, im bit lazy to do all the calculations myself...)

here's the results:

Suppose a hacker has a computer performing 100 billion calculations per second
and that the password is a random string that contain at most 64 different characters,
including 26 different letters, 26 different capital letters, 10 different digits,
the underscore symbol and hyphen.

Then it would take at most...

0.0107374 second to hack a password with length 5

0.687195 second to hack a password with length 6

43.9805 seconds to hack a password with length 7

46.9125 minutes to hack a password with length 8

50.04 hours, roughly 2 days to hack a password with length 9

4.448 months to hack a password with length 10

roughly 23.7 years (roughly 2 decades) to hack a password with length 11

roughly 151.8 decades (roughly 15.2 centuries) to hack a password with lenght 12 (i.e. not in his lifetime)

Password should have AT LEAST 10 characters in length.
Using a password that does not contain any word from the dictionary or simple "1337 words",
such as p455w012d, and length 10-12 greatly decreases the chances of your account being hacked."

Science Center, Singapore said: "

Today, even low-cost computers can perform about one billion calculations per second.
Humans are driving computer growth measured in billions of calculations per second and GB of storage.
(source: link

"

EE times said: "

The computer executes instructions sequentially until it finds a GOTO instruction that tells it to go to a different place in the program. It can execute billions of instructions per second, using the same program logic on each new set of data brought in.

"

Discovering Computers 2008 said: "

Some computer professionals measure a processor's speed according to the number of
MIPS (millions of instructions per second) it can process. Current desktop personal computers
can process more than 27,000 MIPS [for those who dont know, 27,000 MIPS = 27 billions of instructions per second]

"

icemage07 said: "I'll try to explain this as clear as possible


We all know that modern computers are considerably faster than old computers
a modern computer is just as capable as a super computer back then.

In 1986, roughly 2 decades ago, a super computer could perform several billion calculations per second
link


Nowadays, even a low-cost computer can perform a billion calculation per second:



Note that the article, written by IT experts at the Science Center in Singapore,
also states that:

"In the late 1980's you could purchase a personal computer that could process
about one million calculations per second.

EE times confirm that an average computer is capable of performing billions of calculations per second:
link



This information is also confirmed on page 190 of Discovering Computers 2008 (complete).
The authors of this book state that:



You might want to check your sources. Did you get that dubious information from someone else (who

may and may not know much about computers), maybe from a random user at yahoo.answer,

(http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080609133032AAFOpOw) or from a

reliable source (computer experts, computer magazines/articles)? To say that a modern home PC performs

only thousands of calculations per second, even slower than home PCs some decades ago is rather

unreasonable (in late 80s Home PCs were capable of performing millions per second)


(unless, of course, both my computer professor and these sources are wrong - maybe a random user at
yahoo is telling the truth. who knows. note that that random person at yahoo answers confused M with thousand, when it actually stands for million
that is K = thousand, M = million, G = billion, but you all know this... i hope o_o;;)
)

On my calculations, I kept in mind what my CS professor used to tell the class, that a computer is

capable of performing billions of calculations per second. On my first post I assumed the worst,

that is, I supposed that a hacker had a fast computer, faster than an average home PC.

If you still do not believe these sources, think of it this way:

a computer perform x calculations per cycle (x >= 1)
and modern computers have around 7 GHz, or 7 billion herts
1 hert = 1 cycle per second
thus an average computer have around 7 billion cycles per second

but wait, the computer perform at least 1 operation per cycle
Thus, an average computer can perform billions of operations per second."

icemage07 said: "for the T.S.
plug-ins? who needs it?
If you know C++, coding the algorithm will not be a problem
But if you really insist, here's the code (sorry for those who donnot understand the code )

What's your C++ compiler, by the way?
and of course its finished, else I'd not be able to F9 my program...

=============================================================

#include <iostream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cmath>

void intro();
void secure(double number_of_characters_allowed, double length_of_the_password);

using namespace std;
int main(){
int x, length;
char ans;

intro();

do{
cout << "ntEnter the number of different characters allowed in the"
<< "password: ";
cin >> x;
cout << "ntEnter the length, that is, the number of characters usedn"
<< "tfor the password: ";
cin >> length;
secure(x, length);

do{
cout << "ntEvaluate another password? (Y/N)";
cin >> ans;

if (ans == 'y'||ans == 'Y')
{break;}

else if (ans == 'n'|| ans == 'N')
{break;}

else
{
cout << "ntWrong imput!";
cin.clear();
cin.ignore(300,'n');
}
}while (true);

system("cls");

}while (ans == 'y' || ans == 'Y');

system("pause");
return 0;
}

void intro(){

cout << "nt ******************** password rater ************************nt"
<< "nttBy The Password Hunters Inc";
return;
}

void secure(double number_of_characters_allowed, double length_of_the_password){

double security = 0;
double seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades, centuries;
double cracker = 100000, hacker = 1000000;
//cracker*hacker is the program(password cracker) in a computer that makes
//100 billion calculations per second

security = pow(number_of_characters_allowed, length_of_the_password);
security = security/cracker;
security = security/hacker;

seconds = security;
minutes = security/60.0;
hours = minutes/60.0;
days = hours/24.0;
months = days/30.0;
//for the purpose of this progarm, we'll consider 1 month to equal 30 days
years = months/12.0;
decades = years/10.0;
centuries = decades/10.0;

cout << "ntWith a super computer performing 100 billionn"
<< "tcalculations per second, it would take the hacker at mostnnt"
<< seconds << " secondsnt= " << minutes << " minutesnt= " << hours
<< " hoursnt= " << days << " daysnt= " << months << " monthsnt= "
<< years << " yearsnt= " << decades << " decadesnt= " << centuries
<< " centuriesnnt" << "to crack a password with at most "
<< number_of_characters_allowed << " possible characters and lengthnt"
<< length_of_the_password << " characters.";

}

/*
this program is free to use and modify
you may be surprised how vulnerable passwords are...
PM me if you think there's a mistake in my program...
*/
======================================================================
**IMPORTANT**
for some reason, the backslash is ommited when I press "submit"
just add the (backslash) after the characters 'n' and 't' that appears "randomly" in the program.
the (backslash)n goes to a new line;
the (backslash)t pushes the text to the right;"

LycheeB said: "

My C++ is having issues, can you compile it for me? Sorry for the long delay between the post, but I just can't make my C++ work."