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Password strength

Google has what could loosely be called an "API" for a password strength checker algorithm. You can replace the text after "=" with whatever you like and Google will respond with a value from 1 to 4 on how strong the password seems to be.

I tried several passwords and didn't agree with the assessment on several of them ("mypasssword" is NOT a secure password!), but it's interesting to play around with. I wonder if Google plans to use this to enforce a certain level of password strength for their user accounts?

Mac OS X users have a nice built-in password strength meter in the "Password Assistant" available in System Preferences->Accounts->Change Password...->Little Key Icon:

The Password Assistant generates a list of suggested passwords each time you open it, so if you frequently need new passwords and have access to Mac OS X, this can be a nice source of inspiration. The button to launch it is a bit buried (if you're an OS X user, have you ever noticed that key icon? Or if you have, did you realize you could click it?), but it's still very useful.

Posted at 03:47PM Jan 08, 2007 by Chris in Personal  |