Password Difficulties

[joshua geller]

>   My tests were informal.  The target was mostly taken from the sci.crypt
>   readership -- I don't deal much with management...

>   The initial tests were on passphrases of lengths from 12 to 20, as I
>   recall.  The phrases were created by chosing random words from
>   /usr/dict/words -- and the resulting pass-phrases were exceedingly
>   weird, which may have contributed to folks difficulty in typing them.
>   Not that the scores were bad, but they weren't great.

I wonder how much the success that I (and apparently others) have with
long pass phrases is due to the fact that we pick our own sentences
which have some meaning (presumably) to us.

josh