passwords

[Wictorian]

I think using lowercase only very long passwords is much more convenient & secure. Do you agree?

[Levent]

Nope, makes no sense either.

[Wictorian]

21 minutes ago, Levent said:

Nope, makes no sense either.

Why? I am talking about using 100 characters for instance. Wouldnt it be so secure?

[Levent]

5 minutes ago, Wictorian said:

Why? I am talking about using 100 characters for instance. Wouldnt it be so secure?

If you are using a password that long there is a good chance you are not going to be typing that from memory so might as well include upper keys there too. Still makes no sense.

[Wictorian]

20 minutes ago, Levent said:

If you are using a password that long there is a good chance you are not going to be typing that from memory so might as well include upper keys there too. Still makes no sense.

I am talking about using a memorable phrase. Like a quote or lyric or something. Uppercases make it harder to remember and type.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

1 minute ago, Wictorian said:

I am talking about using a memorable phrase. Like a quote or lyric or something. Uppercases make it harder to remember and type.

That sort of defeats the purpose don't you think? If it's something someone can easily look up. 

[Levent]

1 minute ago, Wictorian said:

I am talking about using a memorable phrase. Like a quote or lyric or something. Uppercases make it harder to remember and type.

Then the argument against not using upper case and special characters would be that not a lot of services let you use more than 16 characters let alone 100 character as passwords.

 

Not to mention using things like that make you vulnerable to social engineering and dictionary attacks.

[tikker]

10 minutes ago, Wictorian said:

I am talking about using a memorable phrase. Like a quote or lyric or something.

Anything memorable or easy to guess, either as public knowledge or about you, would be bad ideas for passwords I'd say as those could be susceptible to dictionary-attacks.

12 minutes ago, Wictorian said:

Uppercases make it harder to remember and type.

Depends on keyboard layout and language I guess? I have no issues typing upper case letters or special characters in my passwords. The problem is that for us easy to remember generally means easy to crack, because we don't want to have to put effort into remember a complicated long string and thus we pick something predictable, easy to guess or simple. Password managers can alleviate you having to remember all your passwords.

 

Forcing people to mix it up helps a bit I guess. That said, P4ssw0rd is not any safer than password, but at least it might take a 4 guesses/dictionary entries to arrive there instead of 1. Its downside is that because then we end up with a "strong and difficult" password that we, you've guessed it, reuse it for every other account either literally or slightly modified so that we only have to remember one difficult thing instead of a dozen.

[wseaton]

OP has a strong point.

 

When setting passwords for networks and critical infrastructure i avoid upper case and confusing characters like Os and I and L etc. Upper case letters do not contribute to complexity as efficiently as longer passwords that are more random but not case sensitive.

 

Upper case is just confusing for users and harder to document. Coding is also inconsistent with case sensitive considerations. 

[Lightwreather]

Here's an idea, use a password manager.