Stronger Methods
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. The Java programming language includes a class called SecureRandom. Windows programmers can use the Cryptographic Application Programming Interface function CryptGenRandom. 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.
These methods should prove adequate for most password generation needs, but their suitability will vary depending on the specific situation.
Read more about this topic: Random Password Generator
Famous quotes containing the words stronger and/or methods:
“Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The comparison between Coleridge and Johnson is obvious in so far as each held sway chiefly by the power of his tongue. The difference between their methods is so marked that it is tempting, but also unnecessary, to judge one to be inferior to the other. Johnson was robust, combative, and concrete; Coleridge was the opposite. The contrast was perhaps in his mind when he said of Johnson: “his bow-wow manner must have had a good deal to do with the effect produced.””
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)