(Source, in case anyone was unaware).
Because you are not a good enough random number generator for the above to be safe. And because most of the password generators I've seen generate "troubador" passwords, or ones that are harder to remember.
This is just a simple password generator written in go - It generates passwords like the one praised in the comic.
go get github.com/zenhack/chpg
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Make sure $GOPATH/bin is in your $PATH
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Make sure you have a valid dictionary at /usr/share/dict/words, and type:
chpg
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Or, make sure you have one /somewhere/else, and type:
chpg -d /somewhere/else
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This should work with windows style paths if you're using that, but I haven't tried it.
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The -n flag changes the number of words used in the password.
- The dictionary should just be a newline-separated list of words. The file should end with a newline.
- Using a dictionary that's large enough is is important. The general consensus is that Randall used a 2000-word dictionary in his calculations, which is fairly small; most dictionaries intended for other uses will be larger.
- This uses the go standard library's cryptographic random number generator, Which slows things down a bit (Just barely perceptible on my laptop), and so this is probably not something you want to use in a performance sensitive context.
MIT. See COPYING.