Diceware (Windows) vs Pronunciable (Mac)

wkleem

I unfortunately cannot compare the two password generators side by side. I hope the Agilebits team can explain the key differences to me.

Stephen_C

Diceware is a way of generating random phrases to use as passwords. The password generator in 1P for Mac currently merely generates random "words" to use as passwords.

Stephen

littlebobbytables

Hi @wkleem,

Hopefully you found that link Stephen_C supplied interesting :smile: Essentially a Diceware passphrase is a sequence of several randomly choosen words from a known list. Despite the list being fixed in length and known the strength comes from all the possible permutations. On the Mac we don't have this yet. Instead we have pronounceable option. It uses the standard alphabet and they likely won't be words but the idea is it should be a little easier to remember e.g. >9Q(f8Yy?dY*}E2Xi3u8 vs koP-ceJ-Fic-nI-Ud-I-, strings of length 5 seem to be the maximum even if you set the length to 50.

Does that help?

wkleem

Thanks for the informative replies.

littlebobbytables

:smile:

danco

If anyone on a Mac really wants to use Diceware, it is possible to install 1PW for Windows under the Wine emulator. No need to pay for the Windows version, as the Diceware option works anyway.

hawkmoth

I thought it was fun rolling a die and picking the words off the list manually. But I have only a few Diceware pass phrases, and I don't change them. I expect the analog method might get old if I needed to use it often. 8-)

littlebobbytables

@hawkmoth it's actually what they recommend too. Despite the desire for a Diceware version in your favourite password manager they do actually recommend not using a RNG (Random Number Generator) and instead use the 'true' randomness of dice. The emphasis there was to cover the small possibility of any imbalance making a dice throw favour any single number.

Note to dice cheats, don't use loaded dice for Diceware phrase generation :pirate: