Making a strong and memorable password.#

For most things I’ve started using a password manager. It’s probably the most convenient way to create and use strong passwords. But my company laptop won’t let me install the software to make use of my password manager. So I either have to look the password up on my phone which is fine if I don’t have to do it very often, or memorise it.

For me the password I need to enter most frequently is the password to unlock my work laptop which I enter multiple times during every work day.

So for this I want something strong and memorable.

I quite like the advice in the xkcd comic below.

xkcd

It does give very strong passwords, the only problem is that many systems insist on the inclusion of:

  • upper case and lower case letters

  • at least one number

  • at least one special character

even though such rules don’t add a great deal of security and make the passwords harder to remember.

So my solution are memorable misquotes. Actual quotes are probably quite strong to start with, especially if they’re not very famous but a misquotation you make up is going to be near impossible. So for example;

We will fight them on the beaches - Mohammed Ali, 1066

password monster estimates that’ll take current computers 194 billion trillion trillion years to crack.

security.org estimates 87 octovigintillion years.

(I think the calculation for one of these is based on zxcvbn)

That’s way stronger than you need but also pretty memorable.

Of course, since I’ve posted the one above on the Internet, no one should use that one. But it’s so easy to make up your own.

I’ve used a very famous quotation but you could use something that’s not famous, maybe something memorable a friend or family member said, or a line from a book you like.

I’ve also mis-attributed the quote to a famous person, you could use an old teacher, boss, whoever.

I’ve also used a famous year, you could choose a date that’s memorable to you.

If you want a few more special characters you could use quotation marks.

With all the cyber crime around these days it’s good to be password savvy. Hope that’s useful to somebody.