How to Choose a Password - Computerphile

How do you pick the perfect password? Is it as simple as XKCD make out, or is there more to it? Dr Mike Pound follows on from his password cracking video.

This video was filmed and edited by Sean Riley.

[minihjalte]

Dr Mike Pound is my favorite presenter on computerphile.

[jord]

An excellent poem there at the start:
"Some people watching will have good passwords,
Some people will have thought about this before,
Some people should have thought about this and haven't,
And hopefully will, after we talk about this, a little bit more"

[Hazzardworks]

"Make a password with words people don't usually use."

*changes password to "Nickelbackisagoodband"*

[chinareds]

All this talk about passwords always reminds me of this scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (the book at least, not sure if it made it into the movie): In the story, the students have to say a password to get into their dormitory. Because of heightened security, they change the password so often that one of the students with rather poor memory (Neville) ends up writing down the whole list of passwords on a piece of paper. That list ends up getting stolen, defeating the entire purpose of the heightened security.

[Huntracony]

I´ve had multiple sites/servises tell me my password is too long, and even had one telling me I couldn´t use special characters. How am I supposed to have a safe password when you don´t let me damnit.

[ThalesII]

It's all fine and dandy until you have to use a website that either:
a) forces you to use uppercase, numbers, symbols, runes, smoke signals...
or
b) limits you password to something like 12-16 characters

[ThePolfAlmighty]

"Computerphile - Making you uncomfortable towards your life choices since 20XX"

[GGanon]

4 years ago, watching this video made me realize I had a bad password system and I switched to using a password manager. Thanks computerphile

[rylog]

"Oops! Your password is too long!"
"Oops! You need to include a number, a symbol, and an upper and lowercase letter"
"Oops, that character is not supported!"

[fruitshuit]

I'd be interested to hear Mike talk about workplace password resets. Lots of places I've worked require employees to reset their passwords every month, and some have onerous requirements for length and symbol usage. I think that rather than improving security, it encourages people to make passwords easy to guess (since they expect to forget), or worse, actually write their passwords down and stick them to the computer.

[uuu]

"Maybe delete your account out of shame"
*proceeds to face palm*

Straight savage

[maxuix]

2 more of these vids, and we'll socially engineer his master password boys!

[jumpingspider]

Guys, post your passwords, lets see who's is best!

[tncorgi]

"Pick a word that other people don't use very often, like your favorite band name." lol

[elave]

as a person that speaks 4 languages I changed my password to 4 words in 4 languages

[TheVirIngens]

More tips:
- Mix different languages
- Use phonetic spelling instead of the dictionary version

[somedaythewave]

now they're gonna use the least likely 10, 000 words in the dictionary great going mike

[DJoppiesaus]

Always when I type a password it gets replaced with * or •, and that's so easy to crack! They really need to fix this!

[picassodilly]

A great easy to remember/ hard to crack password I’ve heard is take a song lyric or quote, then use only the first letter of each word in it-

For example, “unwritten”

Staring- At The Blank Page Before You,
Open Up The Dirty Window
Reaching- For Something In The Distance
So Close You Can Almost Taste It
Feel The Rain On Your Skin

becomes

Throw in a few symbols at The pauses in the song for extra security and good luck finding that in a dictionary attack.

(You’ll probably want to use a more obscure song, just to be safe)

[DarioVolaric]

I always make my passwords 'incorrect'. So whenever i forget my password it will say 'your password is incorrect'