Ben Rothke writes:
Do spaces (ASCII 20) in passwords make them less secure?
Of course not. In a normal Unix password, adding spaces to the password search space increases the search space, so it necessarily makes the search harder.
I used to recommend that passwords be a phrase of at least 15 characters. Spaces fall naturally into that model. If your spelling is as bad as mine, then your password is resistant to dictionary attacks. However, then I discovered that there are many brain damaged systems which restrict passwords to 8 characters. (e.g. IBM's VM/ESA, Netcom's UNIX) For those systems, I can only parrot the conventional wisdom, no words, include numbers and/or punctuation, no acronyms, include both upper and lower case, etc. etc. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA