209
Securing Linux 6
Choosing Good Passwords
A good way to choose a strong password is to take the first letter from each word of an easily
remembered sentence. The password can be made even better by adding numbers, punctuation,
and varied case. The sentence you choose should have meaning only to you, and should not be
publicly available (choosing a sentence on your personal Web page is a bad idea). Table 6-1 lists
examples of strong passwords and the tricks used to remember them.
TABLE 6-1
Ideas for Good Passwords
Password How to Remember It
Mrci7yo! My rusty car is 7 years old!
2emBp1ib 2 elephants make BAD pets, 1 is better
ItMc?Gib Is that MY coat? Give it back
The passwords look like gibberish but are actually rather easy to remember. As you can see, I can
place emphasis on words that stand for capital letters in the password. You set your password
using the passwd command. Type the passwd command within a command shell, and it will
enable you to change your password. First, it prompts you to enter your old password. To protect
against someone ???shoulder surfing??? and learning your password, the password will not be displayed
as you type.
Several distributions include random password generators that can be used to conjure up secure
passwords.
Pages:
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461