Module: Pwqgen

Defined in:
lib/pwqgen/pwqgen.rb,
lib/pwqgen/version.rb,
lib/pwqgen/wordlist.rb

Overview

Private: Wordlist stolen from passwdqc’s wordset_4k.c. www.openwall.com/passwdqc/

4096 English words for generation of easy to memorize random passphrases. This list comes from the MakePass passphrase generator developed by Dianelos Georgoudis <dianelos at tecapro.com>, which was announced on sci.crypt on 1997/10/24. Here’s a relevant excerpt from that posting:

> The 4096 words in the word list were chosen according to the following > criteria: > - each word must contain between 3 and 6 characters > - each word must be a common English word > - each word should be clearly different from each other > word, orthographically or semantically > > The MakePass word list has been placed in the public domain

At least two other sci.crypt postings by Dianelos Georgoudis also state that the word list is in the public domain, and so did the web page at:

web.archive.org/web/%2a/http://www.tecapro.com/makepass.html

which existed until 2006 and is available from the Wayback Machine as of this writing (March 2010). Specifically, the web page said:

> The MakePass word list has been placed in the public domain. To download > a copy click here. You can use the MakePass word list for many other > purposes.

“To download a copy click here” was a link to free/makepass.lst, which is currently available via the Wayback Machine:

web.archive.org/web/%2a/http://www.tecapro.com/free/makepass.lst

Even though the original description of the list stated that “each word must contain between 3 and 6 characters”, there were two 7-character words: “England” and “Germany”. For use in passwdqc, these have been replaced with “erase” and “gag”.

The code in passwdqc_check.c and passwdqc_random.c makes the following assumptions about this list:

  • there are exactly 4096 words;

  • the words are of up to 6 characters long;

  • although some words may contain capital letters, no two words differ by

the case of characters alone (e.g., converting the list to all-lowercase would yield a list of 4096 unique words);

  • the words contain alphabetical characters only;

  • if an entire word on this list matches the initial substring of other

word(s) on the list, it is placed immediately before those words (e.g., “bake”, “baker”, “bakery”).

Additionally, the default minimum passphrase length of 11 characters specified in passwdqc_parse.c has been chosen such that a passphrase consisting of any three words from this list with two separator characters will pass the minimum length check. In other words, this default assumes that no word is shorter than 3 characters.

Defined Under Namespace

Classes: Generator

Constant Summary collapse

VERSION = 
"0.0.5"

Class Method Summary collapse

Class Method Details

.generate(length = 3) ⇒ Object

Public: Returns a random generated password string.

length - number of words used to create the passphrase.

Example

Pwqgen.generate 2 # => “Loyal8atomic”

Pwqgen.generate # => “Gate*Abound&hull”

Returns a password string.



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# File 'lib/pwqgen/pwqgen.rb', line 36

def self.generate(length = 3)
	self::Generator.new.generate length
end

.new ⇒ Object 



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# File 'lib/pwqgen/pwqgen.rb', line 40

def self.new
	self::Generator.new
end