“denimawningbondedreturncamisolepebblecrewlessbook”). If a list contains “prefix words” (also known as “prefix codes”), users should not be permitted to create passphrases in which no punctuation separates words (e.g. Length isn’t the only choice that these word list makers face. Some examples: “aggeus”, “bildad”, “englex”, “faubourg”, and “mytholog” – not exactly correct horse battery stapler. (To be specific, each word from the 1Password list adds about 14.16 bits of entropy, while a word from the EFF long list adds 12.92 bits.) Of course the downside is that, since it has more words, presumably some of the words are more esoteric and potentially harder for more people to remember or pronounce. 1Password’s list is 18,328 words long, so each word adds more “randomness” or strength (commonly measured in bits of entropy) to a generated password as compared to the EFF long list. There are a few popular word lists in use today, the king of the bunch seemingly the EFF long list, which contains 7,776 words.ġPassword has their own word list for when users randomly generate password. It feels particularly human, and maybe Didionesque. As a journalist, I particularly enjoy that this is thanks in part to humankind’s ability to construct and recall narratives. To me, in an age where computers are doing more and more things that people thought they could never do (for example dominate the game of go) this seemed to be a neat example of humans, even young ones, still being able to coolly triumph over machine in an arena where it might seem like computers would have an advantage. Turns out a string of randomly chosen words can be difficult for a computer to guess, but still easy for a person to remember, especially if we use a bit of story-telling. Even the methods of creating these passwords, notably using dice, fascinates me. A few years ago I got interested in passphrases (as passwords) and the word lists used to generate them.
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