Privacy

31914 readers

519 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

How secure does your computer user login password need to be and why? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 months ago by SentientFishbowl@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm aware of what constitutes a decent password, but typing in 15-30 random characters each time I lock my computer screen is starting to get a bit taxing.

How secure does my user password really need to be and what are the threats to it? Does the same apply to a root-enabled user as a "regular" user when it comes to password security?

For context, my threat model doesn't need to account for real people breaking in and accessing my computer, the damage would be very contained.

Bonus question - what are the risks of having a weak password on a root user on a spare laptop on the same network as my main device that is used exclusively for web browsing? Thanks.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] astrsk@fedia.io 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

One can also mix in numbers and symbols and capital letters with their passphrase / sentence. Throw in a comma, exclamation mark, replace an l with 1, o with 0, etc. of course it’s diminishing returns with a sufficiently long passphrase but it can help against dictionary type attacks by adding additional mutations / steps to the cracking.

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Years ago I worked at a company where they based server root/admin passwords on song lyrics. The person who came up with it clearly liked classic rock. I still remember at least one of them:

4ThoseAboutToRockWeSaluteYou!

[–] astrsk@fedia.io 2 points 2 months ago

Lyrics are a pretty good base. Especially in passphrase style with spaces if supported, along with punctuation and capitals/numbers. What sucks is when an account system can't support a long password. That's the most frustrating requirement for any service and the greatest vulnerability of all the common restrictions.