How to choose a strong password - simple tips for better security

Sophos's Graham Cluley explains a simple way of creating a complex hard-to-guess password - and how you should never use the same password on different sensitive websites.

Learn at http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2009...

• Category

  Science & Technology

[ophierik]

correcthorsebatterystaple is all I have to say.

[Amber Zen]

Good idea, a longer password takes longer to hack.. maybe they give up or you change the password before they can get it!

[jevansturner]

Yeah. Encourage users to submit their passwords to a third party...who can sell it to hackers to enhance their dictionary :)

I should make a site like that.

"What? No! This site doesn't harvest and sell passwords. Honest! We just want to tell you how secure your password is! Mua hua ha ha haaa!"

[Subarashī Kuraudo]

My file where I place my passwords has a password on it and someone deleted it, so now what?! I can't do anything about it... TT~TT

[FruityFilm]

They might as well suggest "passswordpassword" as it is actually stronger than the ones they suggest

[123machet]

You'd rather use a 1,2,3,4,5,6 password? lol

[FruityFilm]

This is from Sophos? This is the advice they're giving people? Oh dear, I'm removing my sophos software in favour of someone who knows what they're doing

[TZCoder]

People's accounts are mostly hacked through phishing attacks, compromises to the website itself, re-using the same password on multiple sites or keyloggers

[TZCoder]

I have to agree with some of the ney sayers here this is pretty ridiculous, definitely for websites, any website worth anything wont let you dictionary attack it, this might be useful for things such as file passwords on your PC which don't usually have protection against dictionary attacks, also the chances of someone sniffing your password of the network is next to zero with ssl.

I have found that using foreign words spelled in English is a useful way of coming up with non dictionary passwords