Phoenix Password Generator & Analyzer

Notes on Generator & Analysis

• The password generator uses the 1Password Strong Password Generator as inspiration for generating passwords, with a few modifications. The "memorable" passwords that my tool generates uses words from a list of about ~5000 English words that are between 5-8 characters.
• The analysis uses The Password Meter as inspiration for the "common attributes" factors used to score passwords, with a few modifications. A strength rating of 100% is given to passwords that score 150 or higher. These are based loosely around the minimum requirements that many applications set for user accounts.
• For "brute-force attack resistance", zxcvbn is used to test password strength against brute force attacks. I used an elixir port of this library for this project. Dan Wheeler's essay on how to test for a strong password is an interesting read. He notes that the following are also important factors in password security:
  • Preventing online cracking with throttling or CAPTCHAs.
  • Preventing offline cracking by selecting a suitably slow hash function with user-unique salts.
  • Securing said password hashes.