Creating a Strong Password - Easily

Many people seem to struggle with creating a strong password.  Trying to explain a good way to create a strong password that is hard to crack for a lack of a better word, for most people, seems impossible.  Password strength is important to keep your information “Un-hackable”.  From bank account information, to private and confidential documents, or just because your paranoid like myself.  Well I cam across a system recently talking to someone that allows creating an extremely strong password, that much easier.

The first step is to create a grid.

	A	B	C	D
E	1	2	3	4
F	5	6	7	8
G	9	0	a	b
H	c	d	e	f

For the ease of explanation I have made a 4 by 4 grid.  Lets create the first password using this grid system.  From the grid I am going to make a word, mostly for fun.  FADE is going to be my “code” so that I can find out my password.

	A	B	C	D
E	1	2	3	4
F	5	6	7	8
G	9	0	a	b
H	c	d	e	f

FA on the table equals 5

	A	B	C	D
E	1	2	3	4
F	5	6	7	8
G	9	0	a	b
H	c	d	e	f

DE on the table equals 4.

So now we know our password is 54.  This allows us to have a “secret code” that we only have to ever remember.  And this simple table can be written any where.  Unless someone knows the “secret code” there is no way for them to use this table to decipher what your password actually is.  Not without spending a LOT of time trying to figure it out.  Lets change our password now.  Make it a lot more complex.

	A	B	C	D
E	1gw	2hx	3iy	4jz
F	5kA	6lB	7mC	8nD
G	9oE	0pF	aqG	brH
H	csI	dtJ	euK	fvL

All Right so now lets use the same secret code as FADE!

	A	B	C	D
E	1gw	2hx	3iy	4jz
F	5kA	6lB	7mC	8nD
G	9oE	0pF	aqG	brH
H	csI	dtJ	euK	fvL

So FA is equal to 5kA.

	A	B	C	D
E	1gw	2hx	3iy	4jz
F	5kA	6lB	7mC	8nD
G	9oE	0pF	aqG	brH
H	csI	dtJ	euK	fvL

And DE is equal to 4jz, making our full password 5kA4jz.  Who on earth is going to figure that password?  Not many people.  Of course this password system can be as complex or as simple as you want to make it.  Adding more rows and colums will make it more difficult.  Adding more letters, numbers, or even symbols will increase the difficulty of the password by that much more.

A good rule of thumb is to have a password that is 8 characters long, uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and sometimes symbols.  Lets apply this recommendation to this password system.

	A	B	C	D	I	J
E	msA	asM	rnB	yoW	hwA	aaS
F	dnS	adU	leR	ivE	teT	trO
G	lyG	ewO	lH1	aE2	mR3	bE4
H	iT5	tH6	sA7	fT8	lM9	eE0
K	erA	crB	eyC	wwD	ahE	seF
L	wnG	htH	itI	thJ	eeK	alL

Okay so now we have A, B, C, D, I, J for our top row, and E, F, G, H, K, L for our left row. 

I filled the grid with Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow and every where that mary went the lamb was sure to go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, and L. 

Because I didn’t have a upper case letter in some of my grid squares I went through and capitalized the grid squares that did not have a capitalized letter yet.  grid AE: msa became msA, grid BE: asm became asM, and so forth until every grid square had an upper case letter.

I’m going to pick a secret code at random. AL CG JH.  Honestly the code doesn’t need to be longer than that. AL equals wnG, CG equals lH1, and JH equals eE0.  This makes our password wnGlH1eE0.  Now the password is 9 characters long, random upper case, and lower case, with numbers.  All we have to do is remember the 6 digit secret code.  Lets make this even more simple.

	A	B	C	D	I	J
E	msAM	asMN	rnBO	yoWP	hwAQ	aaSR
F	dnSS	adUT	leRU	ivEV	teTW	trOX
G	lyGY	ewOZ	lH10	aE29	mR38	bE47
H	iT56	tHh5	sA74	fT83	lM92	eE01
K	erAa	crBb	eyCc	wwDd	ahEe	seFf
L	wnGg	htHh	itIi	thJj	eeKk	alLl

I am going to go ahead and finnish back where I started with A, B, C, D, and etc.  We added M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, 0, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k , and l to the grid squares.  Our new secret code is going to be IE and BL.
IE = hwAQ
BL = htHh
Password = hwAQhtHh

This password system can be as complex or as simple as it is made to be.  You can use any combination of letters, numbers, symbols, and the secret code can be as simple or complex as it is made.  A 4 digit “pin” number is a lot easier to remember than a complex 8 to 14 digit random character password.