Diagonal passwords
3 October 2007
If you’ve read about passwords to avoid and how to make great passwords, you’re probably pretty secure password-wise.
The gist of both of those posts was this: good passwords appear to be random from the perspective of a guessor, and bad passwords are anything but random (your name, your dog’s name, numbers from you driver’s licence, etc.).
Are diagonally-typed passwords good?
What about typing diagonally on one’s keyboard? Does that constitute a good password?
It sure can look like it. Here’s an example of an eight-character password typed diagonally: 1qsx4rgb. Most human observers would fail to see much of a pattern in that password. In other words, it looks random. But it’s not.
Password guesser’s know every trick in the book. It’s not that hard for them to design a program that tries out some (or all) of the more common diagonally-typed passwords. Keep away from them.
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