Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection, Authentication

Table 3.1 Publicly Accessible Sources of Random Data

URL Source of Entropy

www.random.org Atmospheric noise collected with a radio

www.fourmilab.ch/hotbits Radioactive decay of Krypton-85

www.lavarnd.org Random noise from a CCD camera

Compensating for Lack of Randomness

Now that I have demonstrated how insufficient our supply of randomness is, I

will tell you that it does not matter so much when it comes to passwords.

This is because we can compensate for our lack of true randomness with a

few tricks that work well for passwords.

I stated earlier that random sequences have an even distribution of char-

acters. In other words, they guarantee there will ...