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I'm using KeePass for storing my passwords for various sites, because you're more vulnerable than you think if you use the same password on multiple sites (especially if it is short enough to be reversed through rainbow tables.)

What I'm looking for now is a way to create good rememberable/memoable (what's the word?) passwords that I can use for KeePass itself and for other purposes where I don't want the passwords to be stored anywhere but in my head (like my internet bank.)

Does anyone know of any good generators? They don't necessarily have to be easy to remember mentally; as long as they're generated to be fluently written on the keyboard, they should be easy enough to learn.

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Don't generate one, make your own memorable one!

This site will allow you to test it's strength against multiple criteria.

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  • That's cool how they don't explicitly check for dictionary words but any word is automatically considered weak as any part of a password since it contains consecutive letters.
    – Jared Updike
    Jul 17, 2009 at 7:36
  • That's a nice site, I will bookmark it =)
    – Blixt
    Jul 17, 2009 at 7:56
  • It only accepts 16 letter passwords, making it unable to judge any of my passphrases...
    – Oskar Duveborn
    Sep 5, 2009 at 16:23
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    Yeah, thats what I would do with a password that needs to be strong: type it into a random website. Yeah, I realize that the app is javascript and probably runs all client-side, but I would never recommend a site like that to anybody who does not know much about software/computes - the chance that somebody is recording your password is too high. And they got your IP-address as well.
    – 0x89
    Sep 5, 2009 at 16:46
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    If you'd care to read the bottom of the page, it's all freely available under GNU GPL. browse the source yourself.
    – user1931
    Sep 5, 2009 at 17:59
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There's lots of generators for this kind of thing, but really there's a couple methods I use to come up with something like this - master passwords.

Combine several old passwords. You probably have muscle memory from typing them, the hardest part is remembering the order :-).

Write a perl, shell, ruby, etc one-liner script. Something like:

perl -e '/Password/ and print;'
cat /etc/passwd | awk -F: '/root/ {print $2}'

Write a sentence and use the first letter of each word, and any punctuation used. For example, the previous sentence would be "Wasautfloew,aapu." - including the period.

Finally, remember that a long password of few character classes (ie all lower case) is stronger than a short password with multiple character classes (ie lower case, numbers, special characters). So "asdoihaoeihwoeihfaoihbzoihzsdofihasodfihafz" is stronger than "0mgWtf$!".

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  • Thanks for the tips =) That's something I'm after, something that easily sticks in "muscle memory" because your fingers remember complex passwords way better than your brain =) I just figured it must be easier to learn something that is efficient for your fingers to type, so I was after some application that specifically generated passwords efficient to write on a QWERTY keyboard.
    – Blixt
    Jul 17, 2009 at 7:49
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I don't know what platform you're on, but Mac OS X has a tool like this built into the Accounts settings:

enter image description here

It can also estimate how strong any password is, and it has lots of Type and Length options.

As for other platforms, or generic things, a bit of Googling has led me to these:

And more.

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  • You did what with how many bricks?
    – Travis
    Jul 17, 2009 at 15:47
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I would think that a human friendly password is more succeptable to a dictionary attack. I'd try to creat as strong and secure a password as you can remember.

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    Yeah, I'm not after something like "cheesesandwich123", but something that is specifically generated to be quick and easy to type while still being an unguessable mix of alphanumeric characters.
    – Blixt
    Jul 17, 2009 at 7:46
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I use Password Maker (or the same thing with lots of the fields hidden for simplicity: Password Maker Lite ). It only runs on JavaScript on your machine so you aren't storing or transmitting anything.

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Here is an alternative take -- SuperGenPass.
Saw it at the Google OS tips blog.

Try something like, this blog entry: A password generator I can remember

I would never trust an online system to generate my password though.
(SuperGenPass mobile for example).

I liked Johns PasswordMeter reference a lot (+1 to him for that).

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I always use pass-phrases - the longer the better... Going above 14-16 characters is the first sweet spot to aim for and the character variation can suffer a hit if it means it's longer. This is easily done and remembered with a regular sentence like "Get things done today again!" or "Damn I'm good at this!".

A bonus is that most computer users can type regular sentences much faster and more accurately which lowers the risk of someone spotting what you're typing.

Obviously, passwords need to be changed on a regular basis, or they're near useless.

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Keepassx has a pronounceable password generator built into it.

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I found a good website with a few interesting options for password generation, strength testers etc.

It isn't flawed terribly like some of the major websites that people are currently using for password generation and testing.

http://www.kevtech-apps.com/

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On most Linux machines, you can find a small binary called pwgen which generates a whole bunch of easy-to-remember passwords. The recommended password length is 12 characters.

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Take a random book out of your bookshelf. Open the book at a random page and select a random sentence.

Note the first letter of every word and add them up. That's your new password. Of course, the sentence should be long enough to provide you 12+ characters.

Sentences are easy to remember. You can also additionally add a number at the end or beginning every time to add a further layer of obscurity.

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