Entropy in ascii-armored output?

[Mark H. Wood]

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On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Chris De Young wrote:
> Some people have started to suggest that actually writing down passwords, if
> they're kept in a secure place, might not be a bad idea; the rationale is that
> passwords which can be considered "good" are reaching the point of being
> un-memorizable.

http://www.adel.nursat.kz/apg/

I find many FIPS-181 "words" to be significantly more memorable than
unconstrained strings of random printables and they should be reasonably
strong if they're not too short.  VMS' SET PASSWORD/GENERATE command
supposedly uses this method and has been in the field for many years.

If you need a really long secret you could always make up a "sentence" of
shorter FIPS-181 "words".  It might be easier to remember than one long
string.

- -- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
Open-source executable:  $0.00.  Source:  $0.00  Control:  priceless!

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