PWGEN Passwortgenerator
Programm-Screenshot
Bescheibung...: PWGen is a professional password generator capable of generating large amounts of cryptographically-secure passwords—“classical” passwords, pronounceable passwords, pattern-based passwords, and passphrases consisting of words from word lists. It uses a “random pool” technique based on strong cryptography to generate random data from indeterministic user inputs (keystrokes, mouse handling) and volatile system parameters. PWGen provides lots of options to customize passwords to the users’ various needs. Additionally, it offers strong text encryption and the creation of random data files (which can be used as key files for encryption utilities, for example).
Notable Features
Free and Open-Source Software
Full Unicode support
Unobtrusive: easy to use, doesn’t install any weird DLL files, doesn’t write to the Windows registry, doesn’t even write to your hard disk if you don’t want it, can be uninstalled easily
Uses up-to-date cryptography (AES, SHA-2) to generate random data for high-quality passwords
Numerous password options for various purposes
Generation of large amounts of passwords at once
Generation of passphrases composed of words from a word list
Pattern-based password generation (formatted passwords) provides nearly endless possibilities to customize passwords to the user’s needs
“Password hasher” functionality: Generate passwords based on a master password and a parameter string (e.g., the name of a website), similar to “Hashapass”
Secure text encryption
Multilingual support
In-depth manual (>50 pages)
Runs on all Windows versions (32-bit and 64-bit; beginning with Windows 95 OEM Service Release 2)
Why PWGen?
The following text is an excerpt from the
User Manual(PDF Download) [PDF, 601 KB]:
The usage of a password is still the simplest way to control the access to a specific resource. Although many other authentication factors have been developed (examples include identification cards, fingerprint or retinal patterns, voice recognition and other biometric identifiers), password authentication systems are easier to implement for most applications, are relatively hard to break (note the term “relatively”!) and can thus provide accurate security, if used carefully. However, it is essential for the security that the password is strictly kept secret, and that it is chosen in a way that makes it hard for an attacker to guess it or to find it by try-and-error (also called “brute force”). Both conditions are closely connected, but in a rather fatal way: Passwords which are easy to memorize for humans are for the most part disastrous in terms of security! Among these bad examples we find personal data (names of family members, pets, meaningful places, etc.), names and characters from favourite books, films or video games, simple words or character sequences (such as the famous “qwerty”), and so on. These passwords are for sure easy to memorize—but can often be guessed without much effort. How can we solve this dilemma?
There are many ways to choose good (that is, secure) passwords—but the best way is to let a random generator choose a password. If these passwords are long enough, it will take years, if not centuries, to find them by brute force attacks. Computer programs like PWGen can assist you in generating random passwords, as humans are not very good at making up random numbers themselves. Unfortunately, random character sequences like zio5FcV7J are fairly hard to memorize (although this is possible and probably not as difficult as you might imagine), so you may want to try passphrases composed of words from a word list instead: Five words from a word list with 8000 words or more are sufficient in most cases to create a high-quality passphrase; the security can easily be increased by adding some random characters.
There’s an interesting article on CNET regarding passwords commonly chosen by humans.
The need for secure passwords has grown since the advent of the Internet and its many websites where the access to a certain resource (message board, user account, and so on) is controlled by a user name/password pair. Fortunately, since the invention of so-called password safes, you don’t have to remember all these passwords any more—you just store them in the password safe which is protected by a “master password” (that must be remembered, of course). As this master password is used to protect highly sensitive data, it should conform to the highest security level possible. The security level, which grows with increasing password length, is only limited by the user’s ability to memorize random characters or words. With some effort, most people are certainly able to memorize a 90-bit password.
PWGen is capable of generating cryptographically secure random passwords and passphrases conforming to highest security levels. It can be used to generate master passwords, account passwords and generally all sorts of random sequences. It also offers the opportunity to create many passwords at once. Just give it a try!
Downloads
You can get the latest version of PWGen and all associated files from the
Project Page at SourceForge:
Homepage...: http://pwgen-win.sourceforge.net/
Ich nutze das Tool jetzt schon seit 2010 und es ist bei mir nicht mehr weg zu denken, Freeware und Open Source spricht für sich.
Gruß
Scotty
PWGen - a professional Password Generator - Portable oder Installer - Free and Open-Source Software
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