Sixth-Grader Offers Secure Passwords Shipped To Your Door

These days, so much of our content is stored online in a digital format. You need only enter your username and password, and you have instant access to it all. While that makes our lives so much easier, it can also make our lives a little less secure. After all, if someone is able to obtain or guess those credentials, all of your private information is laid bare. So how to you ensure that you have a password that no one will guess? One 11-year-old from New York thinks she has the answer.

There are different schools of thought on how to craft a strong password. But everyone can agree that you can never have one that is too strong. One popular method is to string together a few common words, such as "correct horse battery staple", which would be nearly impossible to guess, and would take a computer many years to brute-force. NYC sixth-grader Mira Modi has decided to help not only educate people about strong passwords, but has offered to make passwords for you, using a variation of this method.

By utilizing Diceware, which is a system for using dice to generate random words for you, she has started to sell secure passwords to anyone that needs one. She initially started the venture with in-person sales, but has now taken the business online, with the launch of Dicewarepasswords.com. Should you order one from her, she will take a set of dice, and make the necessary rolls. Then she matches the outcome of the rolls to the Diceware word list. The password is written on a single piece of paper, which is enclosed in an envelope and mailed to you.

Yes, this makes the password vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, and it is far more secure to simply get a set of dice and generate your own password. Mira Modi is accomplishing more than providing secure passwords, with her website. She's raising awareness about the topic, which is certainly a worthwhile cause.

VIA: ArsTechnica