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Comment by enriquto | Hacker News Reader

> Each entry has about 42 bits of randomness. Queries are not recorded. Randomness is probably as good as the random resource in the operating system.

Hmmm. Such a statement should be backed by proof, not by trust. Until you can run the code locally you can't assume that any of these things is true. As far as we know, this can be a reverse password harvesting scheme.

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> Such a statement should be backed by proof, not by trust.

Just noting that "Cheswick" is the dude that literally (co-)wrote the book on firewalls (1e in 1994):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewalls_and_Internet_Securit...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cheswick

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_(computing)

Is this some sort of argument from authority? I'm not accusing the author of anything.

But now that you mention him, the man was working at Bell labs during the time when Ken wrote his famous essay "reflections on trusting trust". If he shared just a small part of his colleague's spirit, it would be irresistible to him to log all passwords that thousands of people may decide to use. Mainly as a conversation starter, not to do anything bad with these passwords. Maybe he's gathering cool stories in case of a hypothetical Turing award in the future?

It is an argument from authority, but such a critique is less relevant in this context. This is not the examination of a logical argument.

GP was arguing that OP is trustworthy because he has a reputation to maintain.

> GP was arguing that OP is trustworthy because he has a reputation to maintain.

I, the GP, is arguing nothing of the sort.

Then what was your point? Why else reference the author’s reputation?

I'm very fortunate I do not live with your kind of paranoia.

Is it paranoia to have proper security practices? You should strive to be excellent in everything you do. I do not think that targeting the GP with an ad hominem attack is a valid argument.

The fact that you are using the internet means that you have implicit trust in much less trustworthy entities than a known security researcher.

That being said, there's no need to use 3rd party password generators, if you can make your own.

Ok sure, but you're moving the goalposts. The OP was talking specifically with respect to using a non client side password generator. As a joke it is funny, but only a fool would use a password generator that can't be audited and that may be logged.

> only a fool would use a password generator that can't be audited and that may be logged.

Really?

1. It’s from a known-reliable source

2. Even if the password is stored, logged, broadcast around the world for billions to see, so what?

A. Source has no way to know if the user used the password anywhere or saved it

B. Source doesn’t know who the user is

C. Source doesn’t know in which website or resource the password was used.

So… I stand by my paranoia claim. I wouldn’t go so far as to call you foolish like you did me, but I’d say such a world view will not be a net gain for you over your lifetime. You’ll have difficulty delegating work. You’ll have major trust issues. Maybe you already do. But as they say, “you do you.”

No need to make your own generator.

But being able to inspect (theoretically even audit) the source, building (if necessary) and running it locally in some container/sandbox without network connection would be minimum reqirements for me.

I mean, I'll take it.

It's the long con!

I use https://www.useapassphrase.com/ since forever and that uses client side generation (i.e. the password never leaves your browser). And speaking about passphrases... I find it borderline insulting that many sites still use the archaic "whateveR1@" format, like, dude, I just gave you sentence worth of words that will take a bazillion more years to crack than passworD1@ ... some people just learn something in school and then use it for 20 years, I swear.

Do you vet the JS this site sends you every time you use if, or do you trust that because it was client side in the past it will always remain so? Also, picking four random words "meat side" is pretty easy in my experience, but using a client side (not browser) password manager neatly solves the "inane password complexity requirements" problem.

This is an opportune moment to plug my command-line passphrase generator.

Open source, runs on your machine.

It makes passwords like:

    tiptoeing saxophone wholesaler luxurious leftover codeword eruption gnarly skies taco username affidavit

I named it pgen

Get it from https://github.com/ctsrc/Pgen

I use a 1000-line word list, head(1), shuf(1) and then tr(1) to join the lines.

I've just been using

    shuf -n 5 /usr/share/dict/words

and then manually typing them in, optionally adding any special characters or whatever the particular site requires. Changing 5 as needed, of course.

One of the neatest bonuses that you get from using pgen instead is that it can also tell you the amount of entropy of passphrases that each combination of settings (wordlist, number of words) will produce. This alone should ideally be reason enough to adopt pgen :)

If nothing else that would force me to finally learn to spell affidavit. Or just give on on whatever I locked behind that phrase.

Have you, uh… had a lot of opportunity to misspell “affidavit”?

If so, please let me know the name of your SaaS so I can steer well clear of it…

It’s one of those words I use just rarely enough to never learn how to spell, like supeena, deeposition, and perjery.

I occasionally use words that I have trouble spelling as part of a password. I learn 'em fast, let me tell you!

Sounds like "Word Disassociation".

https://genius.com/Lemon-demon-word-disassociation-lyrics

I'll go with the flow and plug mine too, called acopw (get it, Accio Password, I'm so funny):

https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/acopw-cli

It can generate diceware passwords, random passwords, PINs, and UUIDv4.

It uses my own Go module for this, which comes with a list of words with over 23 thousand words:

https://git.sr.ht/~jamesponddotco/acopw-go

> Do you vet the JS this site sends you every time you use if,

Hit ctrl+s

Which you should do even if you fully trust the website owner anyway

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/936/

Great username btw

It bothers me how much folks parrot this XKCD, especially using it to imply passphrases are superior. They are in fact not! Four common words are definitely easier to remember, but is it really feasible to remember hundreds (thousands?) of truly unique four word combinations easily? I would argue strongly it’s not for most people, so then you’re still using a password manager for the vast majority of passwords. Yes, you still need to remember a few, where then passcodes are ok. Also, many sites have arcane password complexity requirements (protip site owners, the only thing that really matters is length) which may not allow for your passphrase as suggestingly formatted by XKCD, thus needing a password manager more.

If we are using a password manager as we should be, there is no real justification for using memorable passwords for the majority of passwords. Let’s use the example from XKCD:

correct horse battery staple = 2048^4 = 2^44

If instead we use the same length of 28 characters with the full range of characters allowed by most websites:

M4Uk@gQRU!JFgwlI6MV$VV39TEA. = 70^28 = ~2^172

Dunno about you, but I’ll gladly take significantly more entropy with zero extra cost any day.

What about your login password though? Or an email password which you occasionally need to access on a machine you don't control? Those are the passwords where I use a passphrase.

> What about your login password though? Or an email password which you occasionally need to access on a machine you don't control?

>> using a password manager for

>> the /vast majority/ of passwords

Added emphasis to what I said previously to show I had answered that already.

I don't remember all of them and I use a password manager, that's true.

But If I need to login on a device where my password manager is not installed, or you can't use a password manager (e.g. windows UAC prompt, linux tty), it will be way easier to open my password manager on my phone and type a password rather than a long random string.

I don't use a passphrase for every login, but for some logins where I think it could be benefitial to easily type it without using autofill I use them.

> for some logins where I think it could be benefitial to easily type it

See my reply to sibling commenter, I had already covered this case in my original post.

UAC supports clipboard, I use managed passwords with it.

>I don't use a passphrase for every login, but for some logins...

>I don't always drink beer, but when I do...

Yep. For most logins, a password manager is the way. But there are some you are simply going to have to or want to remember (password manager key, workstation login), and for those, passphrases are better.

And if you were to add a few additional characters scattered within the passphrase?

The XKCD is not arguing against password managers. It is arguing against websites mindlessly imposing silly rules on passwords, as you are.

Indeed, the XKCD comic Password Strength does not argue against password managers, but sometimes when someone posts that comic I wonder why they need to come up with a memorable password given that password managers exist.

Secondly, jsjohnst was not supporting silly password rules, merely pointing out that a password manager can make the password rules less of a hassle to comply with [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39690528]:

> Also, many sites have arcane password complexity requirements (protip site owners, the only thing that really matters is length)

Doesn't the assertion that correct horse battery staple = 2048^4 require the attacker to know that you're using this pattern?

It might make a slight difference or it might not, but you can't know that it will so best to assume that it doesn't. In practice the amount of computing power actually available is going to make much more difference than the method used.

IMO, pass phrases only seem useful if you have a quite insecure password. It is ideal to aim for 115-128 bits of entropy, which is not that bad with just random lower case letters and numbers (24 characters is good) but turns into a long and complex passphrase. To learn a random password write it down (split into groups of 6ish characters) and copy it from the paper for 2-4 weeks (do not try to guess until you are almost certain your guess is correct).

I use Safari’s password generation and keychain. Works great and has readable passwords.

I do the same and it usually only takes a few days to a week to learn a 16 character pretty random looking password, which with an 6-monthly change-your-password-rule is no big deal.

Or just increment a token in the already-secure password you're being forced to rotate like a sane person.

The [capital, number, special] scheme reminds me of the passwords at my uni. Everyone got a plaintext stored (you could recover and get the pw back, I doubt there was any encryption) 7 digit (yes digit, not alphanumeric) password for your account. After a while these were "upgraded" to 8 and must contain a letter. So the amount of [7 digits]+a passwords were massive. They then upgraded to "must contain a lower and upper case" and you got [7 digits]+a+A passwords, after which a special character must be included and the [7 digit]+a+A+! was born...

Security is no issue if you don't care. They did abolish unhashed storage after a while (and a while is really quite recent).

Ha, pretty much exactly this stand up bit: https://youtu.be/aHaBH4LqGsI?si=Zs2IvRUqtIrn9KH8 .

Good god I loathe that disgusting slime of a man. Even worse than James Corden, and that's saying something.

Reminds me of default passwords on wifi routers a decade ago - ATT especially had a very identifiable SSID format (ATT###), and a default 10-digit password. That leaves you with (9,999,999,999 + 1 =) 10 billion[1] passwords possible, which even at that time only took a couple hours to test all of them. That SSID pattern also left you with only 1,000 possible SSIDs, so a rainbow table was definitely reasonable.

[1] - though now that I think about it, that might not properly cover the case of leading zeroes in the password, so the total number of possible passwords might be larger than 10B; that's assuming a naïve password list generated just from numbers, not from treating the digits as characters, so I need to reason about this a bit more...

It's O(10 billion), so your intuition is good regardless :) passwords with ten 10-digits: 10x10x... = 10^10 = 10 billion, passwords with nine digits = 10^9, etc etc down to 11,111,111,110 (I don't think we should count the empty password). The full length password dominates the size of the keyspace so much that you more or less get truncations for free.

Eh, that's still better than my days at Uni where my student ID was my Social Security Number and grades were posted outside the classroom as a sheet with everyone's SSN and their scores.

So this is basically the swordfighting sim in the Snow Crash metaverse (well, The metaverse, this one does not require a qualifier), but ported to Monkey Island. Should we take Hiro Protagonist's swordplay acumen as a warning to question the promised randomness?

While what you say is absolutely true, a cursory skim of the website's webmaster's profile[1] suggests he would be putting a lot of reputation on the line if he were acting maliciously.

[1]: https://cheswick.com/ches/cv/index.html

EDIT: Pardon my sudden lack of linguistic finesse, clearly the beer I had tonight was good.

That's what they want us to think.

I refuse to believe their beer was good without proof.

Until we try out the beer locally we can't be sure.

My thoughts exactly. Bring on the free beer!

It could be a research project so it might still have some neferious purpose to it.

When I get hold of good beer, linguistic finesse is not a quality that emerges.

According to the movie, the Enigma was broken because each message closed with the exact same phrase in every message. These all start with the exact same word.

However, anyone taking this thing as anything more than the jovial manner in which it is intended is not someone that understands a word of what you just said. So it's all just grandstanding for the sake of it

42 bit is not that much to begin with, you can brute force a simple cryptographic hash in minutes.

Assuming that person trying to brute force your password knows that this passphrase generator exists and starts their search with all possible insult passphrases, otherwise they're searching in a much larger space

Of course, searching through all eight word combinations will be quite a bit harder. But that does not really protect you that much. If you are attacking passwords, you will try increasingly large sets of possible passwords. After you have gone through the million most common passwords and so on, you will also sooner than later spend a few minutes on trying all those insults before moving on to all eight word combinations, at least if this generator becomes popular enough to warrant inclusion in an attack.

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