How easy it is to remember crypto-resistant passwords of any complexity
We all know that it’s good to have passwords consisting of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. Also, we all know that it’s good to have different passwords for each site, and that the main reason why we do not do so is the difficulty of remembering them.
However, you do not need to remember a lot of passwords – you just need to remember one set of rules that will allow you to quickly remember your password to any site. That’s what it takes.
1. Memorize the list of words corresponding to the letters of the alphabet
This seems difficult, but in fact it is quite simple. A week later you will be able to recall them all without any problems. Take for example passwords in Latin, and, accordingly, the English alphabet, consisting of 26 letters. Remembering 26 random words is quite difficult, but placing them in alphabetical order will cause the brain to believe that they have a structure, and structures are easily remembered.
Example:
aardvark, bear, camel, duck, elephant, fox, giraffe, hamster and so on
2. Change the words so that they are incomplete
To use full words is a bad idea, because one of the hacker strategies is just a dictionary search. There are many ways to transform words – swap some letters, remove all vowels, and so on. In this example, we will leave only the first three letters from words to simplify the understanding of technology.
Example:
aar, bea, cam, duc, ele, fox, gir, ham …
3. Replace the letters in the name of the site you need
Use an unobvious pattern. In this example, we use the first four letters of the site name, but in the reverse order. An example is the site of a non-existent site cabernet.com The four letters of its name ebac are transformed into:
elebeaaarcam
4. Add any rules for capital letters, numbers, and special characters
We already have a very good password on hand, so we can use not too complicated rules that can be quickly applied. In this example, we:
– Make the first and last consonants in uppercase
– In the middle of the word, insert 858 if the site is in the. Com domain, and 636 if it is in any other. (For this we take an easily remembered number 747 and increase or decrease it by one digit)
– At the end of the word, we’ll add% $ # (these are special characters located on the keys 543), if the site name starts with a vowel, and # $% (the same characters in reverse order) if it starts with a consonant.
Now our password looks like this:
eLebea858arcaM # $%
This is an extremely crypto-resistant password, and its big advantage is that if attackers in any way find a vulnerability on the site you need, they will not get all the rest of your passwords or an easy way to calculate them.
To apply this method, you will need some mental effort – but in exchange you will get a high level of security. And in reality, the amount of effort required is not so great – our brain is very good at remembering and applying repetitive rules.