Contents: Password Generator Information Overview How does it work? Download! System Requirements Testimonials System Administrator's Testimonials User's Testimonials Support Known Faults
Password Generator was developed by myself to get around a perennial problem that any system administrator has faced - generating good, unique passwords.
Password Generator Information
The above screenshot shows Password Generator in operation. Stunning, eh?
Password Generator Overview
- The buttons should be obvious enough - they do exactly what they say they should.
- The absolute minimum password length is 5 characters, the absolute maximum is 48. If you attempt to set those fields higher or lower, they change back automatically and silently.
- Random Garbage is exactly what it says. It has uses, but not many - I tend to use it for NSM keys, NT Trust passwords and other such machine-based authentication systems. Handing out random garbage passwords to users is cruel and unusual. I condone it heartily.
How does it work?
The program has a dictionary file with 109,000+ words in it. It picks a word at random and compares it to your minimum length. If it's shorter, it appends a random special character, then picks another word and appends that too. The results are finally compared with the maximum length. If it's too long, it gets rejected and the process starts again. The custom options allow you to force the appending of the special character and another word, which generates good secure passwords in my experience.
Download!
Download password generator now! (2,166,248 bytes/2.06Mb) (GnuPG signature)
System Requirements
- Any 32-bit Windows Platform (Windows 9x, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP)
- About 6Mb of free disk space (For installation)
A GnuPG Signature has been provided for advanced (and paranoid) users who wish to verify that this program was produced by me. You'll need my key to use it, of course.
Testimonials
Naturally, I've divided the testimonials into those that matter and those that don't...
System Administrator's Testimonials
Real testimonials from real system administrators.
"Random garbage! At last, I can create passwords my users deserve..." - Anonymous
"That's evil. I like it." - Scott Powell
User's Testimonails
I said we'd have some that didn't matter...
"What the hell kind of password is that?!?!" - luser 1
"You don't like me very much, do you?" - luser 2
"Actually, I think I remember my old password now..." - luser 3
Support
No support is given with Password Generator - it's provided freely, and I don't have time to support it at the moment. More to the point, I'm not using Visual BASIC anymore, so I won't actually be able to put out updates for it if there are any problems. I will begin a ground-up re-write of Password Generator shortly, and that version will have limited support (via email) when it arrives.
Known Faults
No software is perfect. Especially if written by me. So, here's a comprehensive list of known problems with this program:
- Performance - the closest to a delay in password picking would be if you set a silly set of options like a minimum of 5, a maximum of 6 and requiring special characters. It could take a while to randomly hit a combination of short words that satisfies this criteria.
- Interface - The preset values are somewhat outdated - the Lotus Notes setting pre-dates R5, and quite possibly even R4.6. The other settings were based on my exposure to various environments at ICL Sorbus UK Ltd - if your UNIX is nothing like ICL's UNIX, then that setting might not generate good passwords for you. Which, frankly, wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.
- Interface - The shortcut on the Start Menu has the wrong title - it says "password.exe" when it should say "Password Generator".
- Architecture - It's written in Visual Basic. Which means it's slower and larger than it could be. Sorry.
