[Info-vax] Enhanced Password Management

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <4ff0d5d3-8d1f-4e84-b31b-a0906b81ba4b at googlegroups.com>, IanD
<iloveopenvms at gmail.com> writes: 

> Some folks have a fairly good password and just append digits at the end to
>  increment when a password change is forced

Sometimes this is checked.  Many people do this.  Many people substitute 
0 for O and 1 for I or l.  In fact, the "standard" rules---at least one 
of each: upper case, lower case, number, extra character---are in 
practice in many if not most cases implemented like this: only first 
letter is uppercase, O is replaced with 0 or I with 1, there is a $ or & 
at the end.

Longer is stronger.  Not only are there more combinations of m^n if one 
makes n larger rather than m larger, but the corresponding password is 
easier to remember but also harder to crack.  (Also, if the cracker 
KNOWS that the standard rules apply, it REDUCES the number of possible 
passwords.)

https://xkcd.com/936/ says it all.