Disclaimer: I use a password manager, so please don’t direct your comments at me.
So I know this person that says they don’t use a password manager because they have a better system like… I’m gonna give an example:
Lets say, a person loves Star Wars, and their favorite character is Yoda. The favorite Their favorite phrase is from The Good Place “This is the Bad Place!”. And their favorite date is 1969 July 20th (first landing on moon).
So here:
Star Wars Yoda = SWYd
“This is the Bad Place!” = ThIThBaPl!
1969 July 20 —> 69 07 20
So they have this “core” password = SWydThIThBaPl!690720
Then for each website, they add the website’s first and last 2 characters of the name to the front of the password…
So, “Lemmy Forum” = leum
Add this to the beginning of the “core” password it becomes:
leumSWydThIThBaPl!690720
For Protomail Email it’s: prilSWydThIThBaPl!690720
For Amazon Shopping it’s: amngSWydThIThBaPl!690720
Get the idea?
The person says that, since the beginning of the password is unique, its “unhackable”, and that the attacker would need like 3 samples of the password to figure out their system.
Is this person’s “password system” actually secure?
Things a password cracker does before brute force guessing:
If you pick 4 random words, the attacker would still need to brute force through (hundreds of?) billions of word combinations. That’s the point.
Yeah you’re correct. The person you’re replying to is treating dictionary attacks as separate from brute forcing. Dictionary attacks are great on short passwords using likely words, but as soon as you use 2 or 3 or 4 words it becomes computationally unfeasible. I would say a completely random string of the same or much less length is more secure because a dictionary attack won’t work at all, but 3-4 word passphrases are excellent for passwords that you have to manually enter ever.