Simple guide to hard to crack passwords
How many services do you use? How many different accounts do you have on different devices? Ten, a hundred, more? The thing is, we have a lot of accounts and a lot of those are not really that well protected. Yes Google offers 2-step verification (which is great!) but there are only a handful other services that offer this and it is a hassle to keep track off as well. You hear stories from people that don't even bother to remember their account, they keep logged in for as long as possible and when they have to guess their passwords they just click the 'oops forgot my password' button.
So how do we keep track of all those passwords? The reality is, we don't, and we don't really need to except for a few main ones. At least reducing the amount of duplicate passwords by random generated strings is a very good way in the right direction.
We do this by using two tools KeepassX and Dropbox.
(disclaimer: you can also use different services for this, as long as you sync files across multiple devices and the file is on your system so you don't need internet connection to access is, so Copy, Box and Google Drive will probably work as well).
For people not familiar with these tools, KeepassX is a cross platform password manager (this means it works on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux distributions).
Dropbox is a service that lets you save files in a folder on your computer that gets synced to the dropbox website (and to the devices you install Dropbox on).
So how to set this up?
First sign up for a Dropbox account (if already have one or use a different service, you can skip this and move to the second step, we will catch up later).
Second download KeepassX and install it this should be a fairly straight forward process.
Now when we KeepassX open we create a new database, this will hold all our records. You can find that under file => New Database (or use the shortcut ctrl + n (Windows / Linux) or cmd + n (Mac OSX).
You will see a new window with two options that you can check, for now we will only take the first one (password). Choose your password and repeat it after you click next, this will give you an empty database.
First thing we want to do right now is to save this file to our Dropbox, this way it will sync across every device. So when your computer catches fire you can just set up a new computer, install Dropbox and KeepassX and load that file and you are back on track again in no time!
So save the file somewhere in your Dropbox folder by click File => Save Database As...
That is it, now you can easily start putting all your passwords in here, but there is more, what good would a manager be if you wouldn't use it to remember stuff for you, say for instance, very hard passwords?
So let us create a new password for a service, say Twitter. Instead of us dropping our existing password in here we are going to generate a new one, use that one to login and forget all about it.
With our database open, let's create a new entry (btw, you can order all your passwords in groups if you want) by clicking the yellow key icon with a green arrow
(or use Entries => Add New Entry).
Here you can set the configuration for your password, here is an example:
You can choose your group (say: social networks), Icon (even add a custom icon if you want) and add some meta data. But the power comes with that button 'Gen.'. This means generate and with this you can generate a password. If you click it you will see the following window.
Looks scary right? A lot of options right? Well don't worry, you just generate a password (some services want you to have a password with a range of characters, here you can fine tune that). But after you are done generating it. You even have options for keeping the password Pronounceable or make it totally custom. For me the Random default options work in most of the cases.
If you are finished, click OK and you should see something like this.
Now what is the benefit when you only store it? Well this tool provides in that, when you click on the ****** that are in the password column it will copy it to your clipboard. So it will paste that password, neat right?
Now go forth and change some of your passwords!
Ps. There are also options for mobile devices, I might write a followup post for that. But search for KyPass, KeePassDroid or looking through http://keepass.info/download.html might give you the results you need.
