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+[[!meta title="Use smart passphrases - stop enforcing weak and complicated passwords"]]
+
+## Introduction
+
+As a [netizen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netizen) 
+you may have defined one or more passwords for several situations.
+As a sysadmin you may have to setup password policies for your infrastructure.
+Sometimes you will encounter the requirement to use
+lower case characteres, capitalisation, numbers and special characters
+or various combinations of the previous.
+
+I urge you both to drop this behaviour **now**. This article explains
+why it is more sensible to use passphrases instead of complicated
+passwords.
+
+## Passphrase vs. Passwords
+
+A [passphrase](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passphrase) is a combination
+of **words** that is used to secure access:
+
+    iamathepassphrasedefinedbydaniel
+
+A [password](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password) on the other hand
+is usually a combination of **characters**:
+
+    7z/+tt38
+
+There are X very simple reasons to prefer passhprases over passwords:
+
+ * passphrases are easier to remember (try yourself with the previous examples)
+ * passphrases are more secure
+ * passphrases can be typed faster than passwords and thus enhance security even more
+ * passphrases are easier to type on foreign keyboards
+
+## How secure are passphrases really?
+
+Let's take the common constraints of passwords:
+
+ * Upper and lower case (26+26 characters)
+ * Number (10 characters)
+ * Special characters (some - depends on how you count)
+ * Length about 8-10 characters
+
+Let us assume we have 128 possibilities for each character.
+With 10 characters this would result in 128^10 possible passwords:
+    
+    1180591620717411303424 (1.18059e+21)
+
+
+Let us take a look at the possible combination of passphrases.
+Passphrases are a bit more difficult to define, as it is 
+[not strictly defined how many words the English language knows about](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#Number_of_words_in_English). I will use 600000 as one of the lower numbers given in the linked article,
+which gives us the following number of possibilities:
+
+
+    1 word  = 600000
+    2 words = 360000000000                              (3.6e+11)
+    3 words = 216000000000000000                        (2.16e+17)
+    4 words = 129600000000000000000000                  (1.296e+23)
+    5 words = 77760000000000000000000000000             (7.776e+28)
+    6 words = 46656000000000000000000000000000000       (4.6656e+34)
+    7 words = 27993600000000000000000000000000000000000 (2.79936e+40)
+
+As you can easily see, *when you use only 4 words, your passphrase is
+more secure than most passwords*. The passphrase example above counted
+7 words and is still easy to remember. 
+
+## What now
+
+Let us make the world easier.
+
+If you are user and you have to create weak and complicated passwords
+due to some policy, give the provider a link to this article so she 
+can understand why changing their policy is sensible.
+
+If you are a sysadmin or provider you can change your password policy
+to require 15 ore more characters, which would result in
+931322574615478515625 or 1.67726e+21 possibilities - even more
+than in your previous policy.
+
+## For the geeks
+
+I am aware of [Unicode](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode),
+but most characters are not found on common keyboards - at least
+the ones I use do not exceed 200 keys. Even if you could
+enter all Unicode characters 
+(for instance using [ISO 14755](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_input)),
+it still remains questionable 
+[whether the application accepts all unicode characters](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f3e9/index.htm).
+
+If that wasn't enough: You can also use other languages to write
+your passphrase. Learned a sentence on your last holidays?
+Use it (as a base) for your passphrase.
+
+Yes, there are some words that are more common in languages. On the
+other hand, if fantasy words that only you know about are included,
+the attacker is required to guess the full string, which is quite
+a lot of guesses, even if she assumes all characters are lower case..
+
+...by the way, if you consider
+the example passphrase from above as a string of 32 lower case
+characters,
+it would give you 1901722457268488241418827816020396748021170176
+or 1.90172e+45 possible passwords.
+
+[[!tag net security]]