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Show HN: PW - Simple, secure & cross-platform password generator

simontabor.com

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Re: Show HN: PW - Simple, secure & cross-platform password generator

#3

Post by simontabor »

danpalmer wrote: post #2

Looks interesting, but I might be missing something here, what actually is it? Why does it need the service and a password, isn't it generating a password? And how is it cross-platform, it looks like it's web based?

Probably didn't make it clear enough, it's repeatable so you'd use Twitter as the service and whatever password you usually use (master password), it'd come back with a hash and you use that as your Twitter password. Whenever you need your Twitter password, you repeat the process.

https://github.com/simontabor/pw - it's got node-webkit so there's a mac app in that repo and should also work on Windows + Linux nicely (this is simply to take it out of the browser where it's easy to lose tabs and put it in a clean, small window)

Re: Show HN: PW - Simple, secure & cross-platform password generator

#7

Post by simontabor »

ugexe wrote: post #6
simontabor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a repeatable SHA1 hash, what more do you want?

I don't want everyone to know the length of my password that's for sure.

Sounds like you've misunderstood the purpose of this.

I usually just use a single password across most services, so they all know your password, even if you trust them not to store it in plain text. It's infinitely more secure to use something like PW, never entering your main/master password into any other services and then have a generated hash that really means nothing to anyone (can't be decoded or anything stupid). The length factor here makes very little difference, and only you need to know that you use 40 character password (yes, 40, which I bet is longer and more secure than your current password(s))

Re: Show HN: PW - Simple, secure & cross-platform password generator

#9

Post by ugexe »

simontabor wrote: post #7
ugexe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want everyone to know the length of my password that's for sure.

Sounds like you've misunderstood the purpose of this. I usually just use a single password across most services, so they all know your password, even if you trust them not to store it in plain text. It's infinitely more secure to use something like PW, never entering your main/master password into any other services and then have a generated hash that really means nothing to anyone (can't be decoded or anything stupi…

I understand how password managers work. Do you understand why a constant length password is bad?

Re: Show HN: PW - Simple, secure & cross-platform password generator

#10

Post by danpalmer »

ugexe wrote: post #6
simontabor wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a repeatable SHA1 hash, what more do you want?

I don't want everyone to know the length of my password that's for sure.

To be fair, although I really dislike the idea of fixed length passwords, with this many characters it's not too bad.

A full search of the password space that this outputs would take ~10^50 years at the moment, on high end hardware, and shouldn't be susceptible to attacks on patterns, assuming SHA is working properly.

One thing I would say is that with something like this you might as well just remember a really long password and tag on the name of the service at the beginning, that will give you (arguably) more security. Something like hackernewsFe26476e75256504234fC7CbBcE05aEd704b94A2.

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