Strong Random Passwords

There are many online password generators. The best ones make it easy for users to create passwords that are safe enough to keep their social media and online banking accounts secure. What makes a password generator strong is by putting together random combinations of characters (words, numbers and symbols) using cryptographically secure or truly random algorithms.

How To Use A Strong Password Generator

Step One: Choose the Character Sets to be used in generating your passwords.

The options are Uppercase Letters, Lowercase letters, Numbers, Symbols and four specially selected lists of words. Select the character sets you want included in your passphrase by placing a check next to it. Uncheck any you do not want to use.

Step Two: Select the length of your password

You can select a passphrase length between 9 characters and 63 characters long. If you want a password of slightly random length you can set the minimum and maximum length to the range you would like it to fall betwee. If you want a specific length, simply slide the Min Length and Max Length sliders to the same length. If you select 22 for the Min Length and 26 for the Max Length the algorithm will keep adding characters or words onto the end of the new passphrase until it reaches the Max Length if it is not already the minimum length.

Step Three: Click the refresh arrows in the text box at the top of the page to generate your passphrase

You might also like this article: What is the most secure type of password? over at Passwordclinic.com.

Why is a Strong Password Generator Important?

Computer systems often require the use of passwords or other forms of credentials to determine a user’s identity. The authentication process often requires the user to enter a password which is a secret known only to the person logging in and the system they are logging into. Three methods that someone may be authenticated with are as follows: a thing the user knows, a thing the user is, and a thing that the user has.

In other words, most password generators will begin by building a list of characters, or an array of words, and then select one character or word at a time using a random number or other randomization function. However, most of these password generating tools simply and predictably alternate between "character sets" in a predictable fashion. They may choose a random word from a set of words, and then a random number from a set of numbers, and after that they will choose a random special character, and finally, another random word.

The problem with these methods is that they rely on a fixed pattern, a highly predictable pattern. Any password cracker can easily set up a similar program to randomly choose from the same lists in the same order. For example, once they realize that all the passwords look like "correct-horse-battery-staple" it isn't hard to pump out millions of variations that follow this same word hyphen word hyphen word pattern.

The approach used in this password generator is to randomize not only the selection of the character in the password, but also to ranomize the characterset, numberset or wordlist that this password tool randomly chooses from each time, as well. So you might have a password like "word1Aword2wordwordB3#wordC" or "#A1wordB2word#34word56word##7" and so on. Someone who wants to guess your password also has to guess whether to randomly choose words first, or capitalized letters, or symbols, and how many words. It's not as easy as guessing "word hyphen word hypen" now.