Much has been said about the theory of password protection for files, computer logins, and other network accesses. In the past, we used a combination of letters, special characters, and other techniques to try to prevent unwanted or unauthorized access to our computers, resources, and networks. A new password theory is emerging that can help us remember our access codes, be more secure, and generally keep hackers and thieves off our networks.

A password is a combination of words, letters, and special characters that only the user knows, allowing access to a computer or other information resources. As human beings, we have a large number of codes and numbers that we must remember every day, such as the padlock with key on the entrances of our apartment, national identification numbers, license or car plate numbers, telephone numbers , is a large and confusing set of items. we need to memorize.

When selecting a new password or password to access a computer system, most of us understand how difficult it is to remember complex codes and therefore select something that we already know, such as names, birthdays, national identifiers or others. known items and then put a number or character in front of the name or number thinking it is safe. This is easy to understand, as most of us simply do not have the ability to instantly remember a large number of complex codes.

In the worst case, we simply write the complex code on a piece of paper and leave it on a desk, in our pocket or, in many cases, glued to the front of our computer monitor.

However, for a hacker, this makes accessing your network or computer much easier as they usually only have to learn a couple of things about you and add some numbers to the beginning or end of your personal data; you would be surprised how often this grants access to computers and networks. Add some good “cracking utilities” to the hacker’s toolkit and you can understand the threat.

PassPhrases are a concept that will help us create safer and more memorable safeguards for our computer and the protection of network resources. A passphrase is a selection of words and / or numbers that are 15 characters or more in length and that are easy to remember. A couple of examples of good passphrases are:

or igotodalaieejdaily

Oh she has beautiful hair

or surfing in hawaii is cool

According to Mark Minasi, a leading security consultant, a 15-character passphrase will require a cracking program with the following number of calculations to try and break a 15-character passphrase:

o 15 lowercase letters = 1,677,259,342,285,725,925,376 possibilities

o Try a million per second, it will take 531,855 centuries / years to crack the code

As you can see, this is a pretty good security level for your resource.

Another concern with passwords is that if you forget or lose your password and are using a utility such as Microsoft’s Encrypting File System (EFS), you risk losing all access to your important files if you need a hard reset of your password. your password. All encrypted EFS files are linked to your login profile, which means that if you encrypt a directory or file with EFS and restart your computer hardware, those files and directories will be lost FOREVER.

For Microsoft Windows users, you can now also use spaces within your passphrase, however we do not recommend embedding spaces in your passphrase as that really allows a cracker better access to get your code; can help them figure it out in 100,000 years. instead of 250,000!