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The most secure password (mostsecure.pw)
41 points by uncleleech 3289 days ago
19 comments

There's not much point in complaining about joke websites (it presents just a single password that is always the same) like this existing, simply because statistically it is expected that some people will build them for a laugh. They are harmful though, because some people enjoy spreading fake advice like this; and often they will gain traction.

For the more ethically inclined amongst us the best course of action is probably to add this 'password' to some of the lists of common passwords out there, to help password strength utilities to filter it out on the level of 'correct horse battery staple' ­— an excellent password in itself, but used as an oft quoted example and thus not suitable for actual use.

perhaps a better way to make this joke is to randomly generate a strong password every time the page is loaded-- who's going to look at it more than once anyway?
I reloaded it a couple times to verify that it was a joke. Unfortunately, my Grandma was looking over my shoulder and is now using this password on Facebook.
And then what's the joke?

The joke is it's the same every time.

Maybe have it generate a new password seeded by a browser fingerprint. That way it looks like the joke works but it doesn't do any damage.
Which would basically be a password that is randomly generated from very poor quality entropy, giving almost as much insecurity as the current example, while fooling even more people (because it changes). Nice idea.
Generate a real strong password and store it in a cookie then.

Or just don't and leave it as a joke the way it is, I think we're over-engineering this.

That being said there's an actual password generator "feature" in duckduckgo for some reason: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=!password&t=ffab&ia=answer

I can't really imagine why anybody would want to use that though...

what's wrong with using a password generator? or are you just saying that having it built into a search engine is pointless?
This kills the joke.
I think it'd be even better if they delved into the math behind why this password is so secure. It should then become apparent that the site is satire, and that the site doesn't randomly generate secure passwords.

Bonus points to only have the password below-the-fold so that those who aren't going to read the explanation will be less likely to copy, paste, and carry on.

Ideally, as mentioned in an earlier comment, the password could be seeded through the browser's fingerprint to allow the joke to remain (it'll be the same password upon refreshing) but still won't be as damaging for those who don't get the joke (it's still not cryptographically secure).

Those are some very good points. I was also thinking "oh someone computed the least likely password based on leaks, that's cool!" but it's just a static page with some garbage in a box...
I just checked it using

https://www.ssllabs.com

And it gets a grade of A.

So that is definitely the password I'm going to use from now on!

Oh, and here's a useful function:

/* Returns a random integer that was determined by a fair roll of a dice. */

function randomInt() { return 4; }

That's way more efficient than a Mersenne Twister, and just as random!
XKCD
It's a good joke, but a somewhat dangerous one.

The general principle is that humor does not scale. With enough users, the probability that a joke will be misinterpreted approaches 1.

I'm reminded of Al Franken's latest book where he talks about having to run what he says through the DeHumorizer now that he's a politician.

I laughed.

But then I thought about the users who don't know any better and might stumble onto this site. They aren't stupid. They just don't know any better, and a lot of education attempts can go over their heads. Worse yet, sites with poor password policies (seemingly every online banking site in existence, workplaces, sites with 16 character maximums, etc.) reinforce bad practices in their minds, while attempts at explaining the problems are forgotten. I'd probably explicitly note that it's a joke, especially if someone tries to copy the password. :)

Is this a joke? Because this is already added to password crack dictionaries now...

If it is a joke, then they need something to indicate that, and very blatantly at that. Because there's a great deal of people who'd see that and not give it a second thought to use it.

I don't know about all of you, but I'm going to use H4!b5at+kWls-8yh4Guq for my password everywhere. No way any of you will be able to crack it!
Even if this site was not a joke, I wouldn't trust an online password generator, especially if the pass is generated on the backend instead of the client. A quick Google for 'password generator' yields hundreds of these sites which are more than likely run by the same outfit and are possibly logging the passes into a database to make cracking various accounts easier.

There's a few PW generators which run on the client only and don't send any requests to third parties, and I use them sometimes. They are typically very JS heavy and use different seeds to generate sufficient entropy, like client fingerprint, mouse co-ordinates, timezone, etc

The Mersenne Twister algorithm takes a random seed (which should be highly entropic) as input and then deterministically generates a series of outputs. It does not generate any entropy by itself, nor does it specify where your source of entropy should come from.
If I'm not mistaken, using a Mersenne Twister in a secure application is a really bad idea.
This is irresponsible. Some developer's aunt will see this on facebook and actually use it.
I think that is unlikely.

Much more likely: a manager will issue a corporate directive that everyone must begin using this password at once.

It's no less secure than the one password she's already using.
Some developer's might actually use it.
They typed in hunter2, but all I see is * * * * * * *.
classic
Here is what I use (notice that I omit zero and the letter O):

$ ./LinPass.sh luser

xTJ2B2X3

$ ./LinPass.sh luser

JzILD3qd

$ ./LinPass.sh luser

IzlXki81

$ cat LinPass.sh

#!/bin/bash

id "${1}" > /dev/null

if [[ $? -ne 0 || -z "${1}" ]]

then echo -e "Usage: $0 logname [pw]\n\treset logname's pw & force chg"

     exit
fi

if [[ -z "${2}" ]]

then while [[ $pw != [A-NP-Za-np-z]* ]] || # Begins with a letter

           [[ $pw != *[1-9]* ]] ||           # Has a number

           [[ $pw == *[^A-NP-Za-np-z1-9]* ]] # Has nothing else

     do pw=$(openssl rand -base64 6)         # Safe random source

     done
else pw="${2}"

fi

#echo "${pw}" | passwd --stdin "${1}"

#chage -d 0 "${1}"

echo "${pw}"

#http://brandonhutchinson.com/wiki/Linux_Password_Policy #chage -m 7 -M 90 -W 14 hutchib; #chage -M 85 -W 5 -I 5 "${1}"

Unamused. If anything, ambiguous characters should have been excluded. It's a very small reduction of keyspace in exchange for not entering the wrong passwords because of glyph similarities.

Either you're expected to remember these 20-character monstrosities (which is going to be beyond the abilities of most people with 5+ accounts), or more likely you're going to be reading them from a password manager.

Being ISO-compliant is all well and good, but it's been shown many, many times that making password restrictions this extreme causes more problems than it solves.

This is an absolutely terrible idea. At least randomly generate a new password every time you visit the page.

Any internet noob searching for the most secure password might actually use it.

If it was different every time you visited, how could you retrieve your password if you forgot it?
Lmao, yes
I thought it was genius
A new password is randomly generated, reviewed by a committee, and deemed less secure, every time you visit the page.
I think this is brilliant. Culling the herd.
... and then there are stupid websites like Baidu which limit your password to 16 characters.
Those names doesn't exist. So, it's really a joke
this one is better: https://passweird.com/
No spaces? Not secure enough. ( :p )
They should allow emoji and non-breaking spaces in passwords.
Please don't use emoji in passwords until UTF-128 comes out.

Half of its code points (2 ^ 64) will be characters whose glyphs are every possible combination of 8x8 bit images. That way you can make monochrome graphics simply with rows and rows of adjacent characters in the enormous sized UTF-128 font.

And imagine how many emojis there will be? There would more than one emoji for every human who has ever lived.

In short, we'll have really safe passwords using characters from UTF-128. So be patient. ;-)

"Your password must contain 1 capital, 1 small letter, 1 number, 1 symbol, 1 Cyrillic character, 1 Kanji, 1 half-tone, and 1 boson."
that's actually a pretty cool and fun idea. Would not allow :) though, that's too easy
H4!b5at+kWls-8yh4Guq it is then!
0118 999 881 999 119 7253
PolygonPlywoodBrimNibbleUndertow,UnderrateFaxCliqueBribeUnhappily4

EFF Diceware FTW. >128 bits of entropy there. Has uppercase, lowercase, a number, and a symbol to satisfy misguided password strength rules. Being a passphrase it's much more memorable than simple passwords. Clearly this passphrase is the best.

I'd rather append 0A! to passphrases to satisfy silly requirements instead of capitalizing Every Single Word (impossible to type at speed) and inserting a symbol at a random place. This looks a little troubador-sy.