Slashdot Mirror
Memory Tools for Password Management?
New Media Blogger asks: "A co-worker of mine recently got burned hard because they used the same password for all of their online accounts. This experience led me to compile a list of easy-to-use password management memory tools (all free, of course), which make it infinitely easier for me to keep track of my dozens of passwords. I am sure many of the Slashdot crowd have memory tools of their own — what are you favourite password memorization tools?"
As a nerd, I memorize a lot of quotes. And, one can use this to one's advantage. Whether it be Star Wars, Futurama, Orson Scott Card, The Bible, or whatever your favorite work is, you can take a quote & turn it into an easily memorable password.
For example, one of my beloved authors is James Joyce so a great way to make a password from him is to take a memorable quote of his that I know: "Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk." This password would transform into Wawc?Com. which has two caps, a period and a question mark. You can do the same with Futurama or whatever you find easy to remember. Then I just attach that quote with the website/machine/network or whatever it is. You can also append the name of the quoted character or author or actor in order to make it longer so the password might be Wawc?Com.JJ which just makes it even more difficult for a code cracking program to get at.
Plus, since I naturally love the quote, it's very easy to memorize.
My work here is dung.
For years our lab (a research lab behind locked doors, open only to a few trusted people) use IC part numbers for root passwords. To avoid having to remember them, we'd just drop the device itself into the top drawer of the desk nearest a particular machine.
Not the most secure method in the world, but far better than the practices in any other academic research group I've seen. (Most do something really complicated and uncrackable. . . like taking two three or four letter English words and putting one after the other. Or, taking a short English word and misspelling it by changing one letter.)