How To Make a Good Password Formula

INTRO - CREATING PORTABLE PASSWORDS
This is a system that allows you create different passwords that can be constructed (not remembered) and used over different websites.
You would use, in the example I give, your username and the website as part of making the password. In addition you add a series of letters/numbers I call wildcards to allow you change your password while still keeping the basic formula intact. The formula you choose to use should make use of uppercase and lowercase, and numbers. It doesn't use
Example:
Username - Blah (User blah on youtube isn't me.)
Website - Youtube
wildcards - tswcot

BlaYou47TsWc

would be the base for the password. In practice you would use a different system that only you know of that effectively scrambles the letters so that to anyone else looking at it sees only gibberish.
Here's an example to create a unique formula
First I'll reverse the letters from the back to front skipping ever other letter. From bLaH, you get hlh. From YoUtUbE, you get euu. Next I'll choose to make the second letter of the username uppercase and add the number of vowels from the website after it. I'll follow this with the first two letter from the wildcard set to get 'hLh4Ts'
I'll do the same for the username, but I'll make the last part of euu uppercase and add 3 to the first number. Then add the next two letters of the

wildcard.
'euU7Wc'
The final password will look like 'hLh4TseuU7Wc'

If you need to change the password for any reason, you only change the wildcard part. So it can become up to six different passwords.
hLh4SweuU7Co
hLh4WceuU7Ot
hLh4CoeuU7Tt
hLh4OteuU7Ts
hLh4TteuU7Sw


When you first come up with a system it might take you about 20 seconds to type out the password. But I find that on sites you use fairly often you'll find you can type it out much quicker after not too much practice. You'll find that the advantage is that if you do type out your passwords every once in a while, (instead of letting the browser's auto-fill take over), you'll remember the system you've created. Then on sites you haven't been to in possibly years, you won't need to actually look up what your password was to get back into the site. Your formula is the only thing you'll need to know.

The idea behind the wildcard characters is to allow for variation without too many possibilities. So six to ten letters should suffice.
If you need to change your password and don't go back to the site for a while, you'll not have to make a hundred tries guessing what your password is as there will only be about six or so for that username/site.


There *are* programs out there for storing your passwords such as RoboForm, but they may become outdated, such as not being able to work with Adobe's Flash or they just cost money. Plus they don't allow for portability. More people today are using others' computers to log into their accounts.

So having the password always with YOU is part of the purpose of this system.

CREATING FORMULAS
There are many ways to come up with formulas for creating a password.
-Counting the number of vowels/constants in a site name/user name to generate a number.
-Skipping every other letter from a website or user name.
-For websites/usernames that are clearly over 10 letters, you may just want to write a 0 or 10 to save time with typing up your password.
-Note that some websites are only 3 letters long, like AOL, so don't make a system that falls apart with too short of a website name.
-Also you can use only two characters from the username/website to help prevent anyone from figuring out the formula you're using.
-Intermix every other character. eg., UsEr/SiTe becomes USsiETre
-A problem you may find is that many of your passwords look the same because you probably use the same username often.
So 'hLh4TseuU7Wc' for youtube looks like 'hLh2TsybY5Wc' for ebay. Where hLh is based on your username. A simple example to "correct" this could be to shift the first letter based on the number of vowels in the website name. In the alphabet, h+4 is l and h+2 is j, so that the two passwords will

now look like
lLh4TseuU7Wc, and
jLh2TsybY5Wc

This will add another layer of complexity to your passwords if any are seen, but also slows down how fast you can type out your password. Too much thinking while typing out your password will cause you to throw the system out all together.

NOTES
Things to avoid are using the keyboard for making the password. The main reason for this is based on portability. Some mobile devices will not have a standard keyboard.
Also avoid special characters. Unfortunately they're a growing number of sites that don't allow for these characters.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• password security
• formula
• RoboForm
• Encryption
• cracking
• hacking
• cracker
• hacker
• hack
• Kevin Mitnick
• your mom
• youtube

[goodpasswords]

(Cont...)

(The wildcards here are from the mnemonic for remembing the order of the planets - My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas, or Mercury, Venus, Earth, etc.) mvemjsunp

Additional note, some site names are long, such as howsecureismypassword. net, so you can make a rule that for 10 or more letters, just use a 0 to speed up tying out the password.

Another thing is that you can often log in with either a un or email, so that can be an issue to be resolved.

[goodpasswords]

(cont) eg., sitename.org un:blah can become aH$8MvlE2Em

Which is the last two letters of un, special symbol added, the wildcards Mv added.

Next part is then last two letter from site name, where I change the letter before m to l (the preceding letter), then add 4 to 8 to get 12 and only use the last digit. followed by more wildcards.

The +4 is just random and part of this formula to help speed up typing it out instead of more counting. (cont...)

[goodpasswords]

Some changes/updates to this video:

Sites like youtube are owned by google, so it can be confusing which site to use. I would go with google since you can log in to many other areas with the same un/pw.

Also some sites do force you to use special symbols, so now I just always include the same one. If a site doesn't allow it, I just don't use it.

Counting out the number of letter in your un and site name takes too long, so I's just count the site name and add some number to that (cont)

[goodpasswords]

An example of why a system that can use special characters is difficult to implement

Sony Online Entertainment

Password Requirements:

-8-15 characters in length

-Alphanumeric (A-Z, a-z, 0-9), and supports the following special characters: !"#$%

-At least one number (0-9) required

[Note that you can only use a select set of special characters]

If you have a system that allows for it, here it might break apart because, only *some* special characters are allowed, but not all.