
6 Jul
2018
6 Jul
'18
2:40 a.m.
I tend to just string up lots of characters, so my passphrases look like this:
^#.;Odfi9@7f$}'~%42w0,m:Qe_|33+\ and so on.
Why the heck would you need a password this big? There are 94 printable characters (0x33 .. 0x7E); a random password 32 chars long (like the above) will thus have ~ 1.38 x 10^63 possibilities, meaning 210 bits of entropy (10^63 = O(2^210)). What, do you intend to use your password as a public key? A password made of the same character set, but only 8 chars long, will provide 94^8 ~= 6 x 10^15 = O(2^50) combinations. I'd say that's plenty - remember, it's a password, not a key. Mark