![]() The auto-correct issue is plausible but never occurred to me.Īpparently, the average native English speaker knows 20,000 words, and recognizes 40,000. I think this guy may be onto something with his proposed replacement wordlist for 1Password. Thank you for helping me to understand this. So, to sum up: if you're worried about lost entropy (and there is indeed some), simply increase the number of (randomly chosen) words in your passphrase. Allowing the generator to randomly choose five words instead of four increases the entropy to 70.1275 bits, which is vastly greater in real terms than four words using either list. ![]() But you can very easily address that reduction by simply adding another word, even using the smaller list. That may seem like a small amount, but remember, each additional bit is TWICE the "size," so small fractions definitely make a difference. Four words at "full strength" would be 56.6bits of entropy, while at the reduced total wordlist of 16676, it would be 56.102. If you shave off, say, 1,500 words, then it would be 2^ n = 16676, or n= 14.0255.Īs you may have guessed, it is that latter point - how many words are chosen - which will make the most significant difference. Change the calculation of 2^ n = 18176 into whatever you think (or know) the word list will be shortened into.So the question of how much entropy will be lost when a person self-limits the word pool as you've suggested (or by any other method) is an equally simple two-parter: From there, it's a simple matter of multiplying that by the number of words. If you have (like we do) a random wordlist of what appears today to be 18,176 words (if I counted correctly, heh), then 2^ n = 18176*, and therefore n = 14.1497, or, in non-math-speak English: just under 14.15 bits of entropy per word. Unlike the formula for random-character passwords, which has to take into account character-space (which varies with allowed symbols, etc), word-list password entropy-estimation is considerably simpler. the generator is a well-designed cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator, which ours is), then you have n bits of entropy when there are 2^ n possible passwords. Assuming the generated passwords are equally probable (i.e. For a password with an entropy of n bits, your attacker would need to check 2^( n-1) passwords before hitting the correct one (the "minus one" here being half, since we're using binary logarithm). However, it would not surprise me to learn that there are indeed people who will "skip" a generated password if it contains words with which they're unfamiliar (on the theory that it would be easier to forget/misspell such words, perhaps).Įntropy can be thought of as the "cost" of brute-forcing the correct password (no shortcuts, just straight guessing one after the next until the correct password is discovered). Many of them will give you memorable passwords according to them, but those passwords are based on their own library of words without letting you select the base to build your real memorable password.- great questions! I can't say what people tend to do because we intentionally know nothing about the generation of your password(s) all that logic is kept client-side (in your 1Password app or browser). ![]() What about Password Generators? Many of them will give you very strong passwords, but almost impossible to memorise. Many of the most popular ones could potentially leak unencrypted credentials and passwords ( check this Independent Security Evaluators (ISE)'s research) You have to rely on that third party software and assume it is operative at any time. What about Password Managers? They are pretty easy and safe to use, but you still need one master password to access them. You can easily check how strong are these passwords (click over the passwords to copy them) with tools like "How secure is my password?" or this artificial neural network developed by Carnegie Mellon University - Spoiler: it would take a contemporary computer hundreds of generations to crack this kind of passwords. To have an even stronger password structure, you can also use a root password per category (for example: one for social networks, another for streaming services, another one for financial services.), such as:
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