| It is pretty easy to defend against dictionary attacks by using an expanded | character set--mixed caps and lower case; numbers substituted for some | letters according to easily-remembered personal rules. | | "Da5id" in "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson is an obvious example, since the | "v" is a roman numeral 5. Another is the "Compuserve method" of inserting | punctuation characters between words making up a password or key. Since the | length of the words used is unknown to the cracker, this makes his job | harder. You should on the other hand be able to use the username as an indicator of what kind of password it is; user "warez" / pass "warez" (but better check the home directory for MS Word) user "l0pht" / pass "'l33t" user "feh" / pass "uk4n+r3dt13" (look for zines) Actually, these kids believe the language they use are hiding them, but I bet that the letter digrams they present is a immediate marker of "H4k3rz". It's definitively better than searching for normal "elite, hacker, phracker, exploit". I just used "l33t" (52), "d00d" (742), "h4qu3r" (5), "sux" (4053) on AltaVista, to name a few. -cwe