Ian Daniel Stewart

Passphrases are awesome. Easy to remember; Hard to break. This XKCD comic explains it better than I ever will.

I use 1Password to remember all my passwords — highly recommended — so I don’t really need to remember any passwords but one. But I like to have a few stuffed into my brain permanently. My Apple ID, Gmail, and, of course, 1Passwords master password. Here’s how I make pretty strong (stronger than correct horse battery staple) passphrases that are still easy to remember.

First, I find a passphrase generator. Like, this one and generate a list of passphrases. I might get something like this …

priming whiffle nitrate keepsake goneness fireman

That’s alright. But we can do better. Why not make it even more secure by turning it into a bit of dialogue?

"Keep priming the whiffle nitrate!" shouted the gory fireman!

I dropped some words, added some, and added some punctuation, making it even harder to guess but, more importantly I can remember this passphrase.

Here’s another one. I randomly generated this …

goodbye close baby cakewalk henhouse stowage

and rearranged it into …

"Goodbye," said Baby, "I cakewalked the henhouse to stowage."

Or maybe something with numbers in it.

"It's 7 staves westward," I detailed. "Past the 12 hexagons."

A little longer than correct horse battery staple but when it really counts you want something really strong.