RE: [PHP] Changing passwords

I change my password about every three months, I use 10 character randomly generated passwords containing numbers, letters of both cases and symbols. There are several good password generators out there, my favorite is pwgen. pwgen can generate normal passwords that are pronouncible or secure passwords like I mentioned. Example: > pwgen -s 10 1 bs[=l>#/-, I also have several passwords I use at one time, one for NT account, one for banking and other information, one for general account use, one for Unix account and one for the root password. As I generate new random passwords I retire my old "secure" passwords into a general purpose password since I already have it memorized. How often you change your password depends on how secure you want/need to be, you should change it a couple times per year at least and don't use words in the dictionary or your name or anything common. Pwgen is great because the passwords generated are not significant to you, making them much harder to guess than say your last name, your daughter's birth year, wife's middle name. I've been known to generate 10 million secure passwords using pwgen and then gzip the file and bring it with me so I can pick one in situations where pwgen is not available to me as well. There are some really good resources on how and when to change your password that you can reach by googling for password security guidelines (http://www.psynch.com/docs/strength.html for example). Jason -----Original Message----- From: Jason Barnett [mailto:jasbarne@indiana.edu] Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 5:43 AM To: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: [PHP] Changing passwords I know that you should change your passwords often, but I'm curious: how often do you all actually change your passwords? Any rules of thumb for this? -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php