Re: User name/password length
Usually, when I instruct a user to enter their user name and password, I
tell them whether the system is case-sensitive,
Almost any password system should be case sensitive. This greatly
increases the number of possible passwords making brute force attacks
harder.
whether it accepts numbers and/or letters,
Some may accept %$# etc or even control characters. If the system allows
it, it is a good idea to use such characters.
Are spaces allowed? Hypens? Underscores?
I think you need to talk about the characteristics of good passwords;
easy to remember but hard for an enemy to guess.
Don't use English words, or for that matter other languages. There's
a site at oxford.ac.uk with dictionaries for multiple languages, for
use in such attacks. Don't use your lover's name, your birthdate, ...
what the minimum and maximum length for such words are, etc.
If the maximum length for a password is 50 characters, do I need to state
this in the documentation?
Yes.
I am inclined to include it--not because I thinkSome software allows a passphrase. If you're protecting something
anyone would ever want a 50+ character password, but because this is a
combined user/administrator guide ... and, well, because it's not stated
anywhere else.
At the same times, it looks silly to say that a password shouldn't be more
than 50 characters!
important, this may be both easier to remember and harder to guess
than a password. I routinely use a PGP passphrase around 40 characters
and would expect paranoids to have longer ones.
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References:
User name/password length: From: Nina rogers
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