Chapter 24

Password Recommendations

Contents

24.1 Online Password Cracking............. 233

24.2 Offline Brute Force Guessing........... 233

24.3 Common Passwords................. 235

24.4 Account Chaining.................. 236

24.5 How Often To Change Your Password?..... 236

24.6 Password Management Tools........... 237

You would be amazed at how many lame passwords are in use. Sometimes
it does not matter, but sometimes it leads to serious heartache.

Don’t become a victim.

You should create a good password, or at least know how.

Anyone who knows your password can steal your identity and take over your
website. Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you will later.

One of the first things you will want to do after logging in for the first time is
change your password. At first, your website will not be very valuable, and
the password you use will not matter much. As your website gains value,
you should make sure your password is appropriately difficult to guess.

Current wisdom on passwords is simple: make them long. Long means 12
to 16 characters.

Old-time wisdom harkens back to the day when passwords were only allowed
to be 8 characters or less. To make passwords difficult to guess, it was

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