Spaces in passwords
Jon Leonard
jleonard at divcom.umop-ap.com
Thu Apr 18 12:50:45 PDT 1996
> 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.
The exception to this is when you may be overheard typing a password.
The space bar sounds different, and an attacker who knows you've used
a space has a significantly smaller search space.
So I usually recommend avoiding space, @, #, and control characters
when generating passwords. Have I missed any or gotten too many?
> .pm
Jon Leonard
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