Password Generator

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Password Generator

Security
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What is a Password Generator?


A Registration form is like the first step that user needs to take to use your web application. It’s interesting how often it is not optimal part of the app. Having an unfriendly registration form may hurt (and usually hurts) the conversion rate of your service badly.


That’s why dynamic features are often starting with forms. On-the-fly validations, popovers and so on - all of these are common in the modern web. All to increase chance of signing up by an user.


Calculate All offers a free strong random password generator for filling out login forms to protect your data and privacy.

The form above helps you create a strong password with varying lengths of your choice. You can re-generate to the desired password


Apart from the sole signing up, a good registration form needs to make sure that an user does not do anything wrong - like setting too simple password. Password strength meters are a great way to show an user how his password should be constructed to be secure.


A random password generator is software program or hardware device that takes input from a random or pseudo-random number generator and automatically generates a password. Random passwords can be generated manually, using simple sources of randomness such as dice or coins, or they can be generated using a computer.


While there are many examples of "random" password generator programs available on the Internet, generating randomness can be tricky and many programs do not generate random characters in a way that ensures strong security. A common recommendation is to use open source security tools where possible since they allow independent checks on the quality of the methods used. Note that simply generating a password at random does not ensure the password is a strong password, because it is possible, although highly unlikely, to generate an easily guessed or cracked password. In fact, there is no need at all for a password to have been produced by a perfectly random process: it just needs to be sufficiently difficult to guess.


A password generator can be part of a password manager. When a password policy enforces complex rules, it can be easier to use a password generator based on that set of rules than to manually create passwords.


Long strings of random characters are difficult for most people to memorize. Mnemonic hashes, which reversibly convert random strings into more memorable passwords, can substantially improve the ease of memorization. As the hash can be processed by a computer to recover the original 60-bit string, it has at least as much information content as the original string. Similar techniques are used in memory sport.


A variety of methods exist for generating strong, cryptographically secure random passwords. On Unix platforms /dev/random and /dev/urandom are commonly used, either programmatically or in conjunction with a program such as makepasswd. Windows programmers can use the Cryptographic Application Programming Interface function CryptGenRandom. The Java programming language includes a class called SecureRandom. Another possibility is to derive randomness by measuring some external phenomenon, such as timing user keyboard input.


Many computer systems already have an application (typically named "apg") to implement FIPS 181. FIPS 181—Automated Password Generator—describes a standard process for converting random bits (from a hardware random number generator) into somewhat pronounceable "words" suitable for a passphrase. However, in 1994 an attack on the FIPS 181 algorithm was discovered, such that an attacker can expect, on average, to break into 1% of accounts that have passwords based on the algorithm, after searching just 1.6 million passwords. This is due to the non-uniformity in the distribution of passwords generated, which can be addressed by using longer passwords or by modifying the algorithm.


Random password generators normally output a string of symbols of specified length. These can be individual characters from some character set, syllables designed to form pronounceable passwords, or words from some word list to form a passphrase. The program can be customized to ensure the resulting password complies with the local password policy, say by always producing a mix of letters, numbers and special characters. Such policies typically reduce strength slightly below the formula that follows, because symbols are no longer independently produced.


A large number of password generator programs and websites are available on the Internet. Their quality varies and can be hard to assess if there is no clear description of the source of randomness that is used and if source code is not provided to allow claims to be checked. Furthermore, and probably most importantly, transmitting candidate passwords over the Internet raises obvious security concerns, particularly if the connection to the password generation site's program is not properly secured or if the site is compromised in some way. Without a secure channel, it is not possible to prevent eavesdropping, especially over public networks such as the Internet. A possible solution to this issue is to generate the password using a client-side programming language such as JavaScript. The advantage of this approach is that the generated password stays in the client computer and is not transmitted to or from an external server.



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