there is also pwgen [was: what is more secure, WEP with 128bit, or WPA-PSK?]

6 Sep 2005

      / 2005-09-06 22:12:17 +0200
\ Markus Gaugusch:
...
On Sep 6, Dirk Schreiner  wrote:
...
Markus Gaugusch schrieb:
...
...
which one is more secure for wlans, WEP with 128 bit, or WPA-PSK?
WPA-PSK is more secure, but also dependant on the pass phrase.
I prefer random strings with ~50 bytes, You can get those easily from
base64 coded email attachments. This is also a great source for initial
user passwords ;-)
Funny idea ;-)
By far less complicated as using random data and md5.
And better, because md5 outputs only 0-9,A-F ...
well. if you take the base64 encoding of a compressed (zip, (.tar.) gzip, bz2, most pdfs,
many image file formats), the entropy should be high enough...
...
The /dev/random and tr approach is of course better (in theory), but I
just can't remember that command when I need to ;-)
Usually, base64 encoded data has enough randomness if you look a bit for
it ...
there is also pwgen:

 pwgen generates passwords which are designed to be easily memorized by humans,
 while being as secure as possible.

 The pwgen program is designed to be used both interactively, and in shell
 scripts. Hence, its default behaviour is differs depending on whether the
 standard output is a tty device or a pipe to another pro‐ gram. Used
 interactively, pwgen will display a screenful of passwords, allowing the user
 to pick a single password, and then quickly erase the screen. This prevents
 someone from being able to "shoulder- surf" the user’s chosen password.

 When standard output is not a tty, pwgen will only generate one password, as
 this tends to be much more convenient for shell scripts. This also assures
 that pwgen is compatible with a previous version of this program.

 [... few options snipped ...]

very nice imho.

btw, Markus, what about that beer we wanted to have the other day?

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