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Random Passwords with Special Characters in PasswordWallet

hacks

I'm a big fan of S3’s Password Wallet (which syncs with their iPhone version).

The most secure mode of their default password generator generates a random alphanumeric password between 8-12 characters long. In their template format, that looks like this:

{[xX#]:8:12}

Which says characters are randomly chosen to be lowercase (x), uppercase (X) or a number (#), and to randomly do this at least eight (:8) and at most twelve (:12) times.

However, I also like throw in special characters, which you can do like so:

{[xXp#]:8:12}

where p means one of the following characters:

~ ! @ $ % ^ & * . ; : ?

Cool!

One thing bugs me though: I'd like to be able to have a toggle for each entry in Password Wallet that would let me specify a different template for password generation. That way, if a site doesn't like those special characters above, I can just flip the toggle and get the random alphanumeric style. (Right now, I have to open the preferences and delete the p from the template to go alphanumeric... and then remember to go and change it back.)

UPDATE: Before this post even when live, Sanford Selznick -- the man behind S3 -- responded to an email that you could use a template like so:

xXxX{p:0:1}xXxX

that will include a special character half of the time. That's a great temporary solution but I'd still prefer named templates. (And, no, I didn't just give you information about my password generation template!)

Even fancier would be something like:

{[xX#]:4:5}{p:0:1}{[xX#]:4:5}{p:0:1}

which produces passwords between 10-12 characters long where the first 4-5 characters are random alphanumeric, then an optional special character, then the same. This will result in 1/4 of passwords generated having no special characters.

I'm going to stick to pure random and a manual toggle, though!