Strange things Andy does, #644

[andrewducker]

You may have heard of affirmations. The idea is that if you say something enough times it attunes you to it, leading you to be more aware of things that could help you with your goal. Essentially, you choose a goal, formulate a phrase that encapsulates it and then repeat that phrase several times on multiple occasions during the day (i.e. 10 times in the morning, 10 times in the evening). For you Invisibles readers, this is similar to the way that Grant Morrison works with sigils - creating a focus point for the mind.

I always have a problem remembering my password at work, especially as I have to change it every 30 days. So I decided that the best thing to do was make them into affirmations. They haven't always worked, but they have proved useful as reminders. My password over the last few months has varied from "SleepMore" (when I really needed to) to "NewTeam" (when I wanted to transfer to a new team) to "DontSackMe" when the redundacies were first being announced. The first and third of those came out just fine, the second didn't, but it did push me to try and do something about it. And the sleeping more was definitely because I was reminding myself 15 times a day that I needed to.

Go on, give it a go next time you need to change your password. You might just be surprised...

Comments

[diffrentcolours]

Of course, this makes your password more susceptible to dictionary-based attacks. But then, I'm the kind of bastard sysadmin who doesn't let you have a dictionary-based password ;)

I tend to use acronyms for non-popular phrases. I'll make up a series of words, or take it from some obscure dialogue or lyric. Throw in some semi-random punctuation and capitalisation and off you go.

I know someone who used a simple mathematical function based around the natural logarithm of a project number as the code for the safe for that project. It was quite useful - a bugger to try and remember, but if you forgot the combination you could recalculate it with a scientific calculator.

[andrewducker]

Do dictionary based attacks work with multiple words strung together? Because if so you're talking about a very large sample size.

[diffrentcolours]

A very large sample size, but still considerably, considerably less than all possible passwords. In my experience, password crackers will make sensible attempts at likely word combinations (like "verbnoun" rather than "adverbpronoun") too.

[andrewducker]

Of course, this is my work password, so they'd need to be past the smartcard-reader on the doors first. And they'd need my mainframe password if they wanted to do any damage. And they'd only get three attempts at either password before my account was locked.

So I'm not too worried :->

[diffrentcolours]

Yeah, fair enough. But I still wouldn't let you if I were your sysadmin ;p

[heron61.livejournal.com]

And thus you take a small step towards becoming a magician :) I'm now imagining this trend continuing for a few years - and reading posts about you digging an altar to a classical snake-god in your basement.

More seriously, well done this sounds like an excellent technqiue and one I may try.