secring and dropbox

[Robert J. Hansen]

> Using a decent password generator and specifying a mix of upper and
> lower case letters, digits, and special characters, how many total
> characters -- as a minimum -- would you recommend such a password be?

Generate 16 random bytes, base-64 encode them, memorize the output.  I use a Python script to generate high-value keys.  Works pretty well wherever there's a /dev/random device that can be read.  I'm sure there's a way to do it for Windows, but I almost always have a UNIX terminal handy so I haven't bothered.  :)

I'm presenting the script here in case someone else finds it useful, but really, it's embarrassingly simple.


#!/usr/bin/env python
#coding=UTF-8
#
# genrandkey -- generates high-randomness 128-bit keys
#
# Contributed to the public domain.
#
# Be careful with this script: each time you run it you consume
# sixteen bytes from the system's high-entropy source.  Only
# generate random keys when you need them!
#
# If you need to generate a lot of keys, you may want to use
# /dev/urandom instead.  The keys won't quite be of as high
# quality, but should be plenty good enough for almost all
# purposes.
#
# Usage example:
#
# proverbs:~ rjh$ ./genrandkey 
# EDTnI9Awc6Y19Rysg2+H+g==


from base64 import b64encode

if __name__=='__main__':
    with open('/dev/random') as fh:
        print b64encode(fh.read(16))