[Q] Diceware password size

Brian Minton bminton@efn.org
Wed May 28 02:07:02 2003


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On Tue, May 27, 2003 at 05:46:42AM -1000, Denis McCauley wrote:
> Third, you can include spaces between the words, or not, which would
> double the search time.

Yes, but this is not completely true.  For instance, without spaces,
some passphrases are equivalent: consider the following extremely insecure
two-word passphrases
the mice
them ice

now, if an attacker tries one of these, w/o spaces, the other one is free.
This decreases the potential number of passphrases.  It is therefore
reccomended to use spaces.

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