What does this thing do?

It takes your input values, uses them to create a secure hash (with SHA512, in case you were wondering), then uses that to generate a rubbish-looking password.

And why would I care?

Random-looking passwords are good. Predictable passwords are not. If you, for example, use a five-character password composed of lower-case letters only, that represents 26⁵ or 11,881,376 possible combinations. Assuming a serious computer could try a thousand a second, it would take 11,881 seconds or about three hours and twenty minutes to iterate through all of them. That's not a lot of time! And on average you'll hit the solution in half that time. Of course, depending on what the password is being used for, and in fact in most cases, you simply cannot try a thousand times every second. But we're looking at worst-case and best-protection here.

Taking that same situation, but using a 5-character password generated on this site, there would be 65⁵, or 1,160,290,625 permutations, meaning that the same serious computer attempting the same crack-attacks would take 1,160,290 seconds or 322 hours. That's one hundred times stronger. In fact, it's probably a lot stronger as you may well have used a predictable (or slightly mangled) word as your password, which makes it susceptible to a dictionary attack. Switching to a character-set which uses upper-case and lower-case letters along with numbers and symbols adds an enormous amount of strength, and makes passwords immume to dictionary attacks.

Longer Is Stronger

Taking the above example even further, let's just add one more character to it. This doesn't make the password slightly stronger as you might think, it makes it SIXTY-FIVE times stronger. Yes, the number of permutations is now up to 65⁶, or 75,418,890,625 which would now take that nasty cracking monster nearly two and a half years to chew through. Even the brute-force crackers would probably give up at this point and move on to an easier target. Let's get extreme here and take it up to ten characters. Now you have 65¹⁰ or 1,346,274,334,462,890,625 permutations taking over 42 million years to test. You're now at the level of password complexity that would require a botnet of a hundred thousand monster cracker computers 213 years of full-time work, on average, to break. I think by now you've probably got the point.

Why can't I just use the same password everywhere?

If the key to your car is stolen, you might lose your car. If that same key is used to access your house, safe, motorcycle, gym locker, safety-deposit box, office, postbox, garage and garden shed, you could lose just about everything you own. Think about it.

Now think about this: that key gets copied by the mechanic who services your car. Somebody that you just hand it over to, somebody who needs it. There's no avoiding giving him the key. So why give him the key to your entire life? Just give him the car key! It's exactly the same with passwords. NEVER use the same password in more than one place, there is always a chance that somebody peeks at it, and tries it (along with the same email address you registered with) on various other common sites. Before you know it, your online accounts have been hijacked. Just don't do it! Rather use utilities like this to generate unique strong passwords for each site or service. You retain the keys that can unlock the passwords, they see only what they need. Nobody ever gets your password for another site.

What do you do with my information?

I use it to generate a password for you. That's all. The details you entered are not retained or recorded. Full source code is available for inspection by interested parties, at the author's discretion.

Why is this page so butt-ugly?

There are no fancies here. No adverts or banners; designed to be used as intended on as many browsers as possible. Mobile and desktop versions will be made available as soon as I get around to them. This online version is here to help you out when you're not at your main computer.

How can I get in touch with the author?

I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me via my online home at The Random Ramblings of a Grumpy Old Fart, where you can leave a comment on any post or page.