Creating a more secure password may seem impossible for some, but a sixth grade student from New York City learned that there is actually a way to make passwords difficult to crack and yet easy to memorize.
Mira Modi runs a small business at www.dicewarepasswords.com where she helps customers to have stronger and more secure passwords by generating passphrases by hand. As the name implies, she uses the system known as "diceware" which involves rolling "real" six-sided dice in order to generate random numbers which she then matches to an English word from a list that she keeps in a binder.
"You roll a die 5 times and write down each number. Then you look up the resulting five-digit number in the Diceware dictionary, which contains a numbered list of short words," as explained on her official site.
When an order comes in, Modi would roll the physical dice and then look up for the words in her Diceware list, which she even labeled with the words "top secret" on the front page. After finding the word, she writes it down by hand. Once she has completed the string of words (6 words to be exact), she sends the copy to the customer by postal mail. She assures the safety of sending the copy through mail by stating that it cannot be searched without a warrant.
"The passwords are sent by US Postal Mail which cannot be opened by the government without a search warrant," said her website.
Some examples of the generated passwords using the diceware system include "diamond phone dollar straw water frog," "alger gene curry blonde puck horse," and "ample banal bias delta gist latex."
The sixth-grader advises her customers to do some further alterations to their passwords by capitalizing on a few letters and adding special characters such as an exclamation point. When asked if she would be tempted to use the passwords herself for a future scheme, the young entrepreneur admits that in reality, there is no way for her to remember all the passwords that she created.
"I think [good passwords are] important," said Modi. "Now we have such good computers, people can hack into anything so much more quickly. We have so much more on our social media. We post a lot more social media – when people hack into that it's not really sad, but when people [try to] hack into your bank account or your e-mail, it's really important to have a strong password. We're all on the Internet now."
