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2025-07-27, 9:09 AM |
Main » 2010 » March » 14 » Make Ultra Strong PasswordsThis is a featured page
11:44 PM Make Ultra Strong PasswordsThis is a featured page |
Make Ultra Strong Passwords
A very good One from Irongeek.Strong
Article Worth SharinAs some Microsoft Operating
System geeks know, you can type many more characters than are on a
standard keyboard by using the ALT+NUMPAD combination technique. For
example, by holding down the ALT key, typing 234 on the number pad, then
releasing ALT gives you the O character. I'm writing this article
mostly because when I search around for information on the topic of
ALT+Number key combos I find pages that are lacking in details. Most of
the pages I found are coming from the angle of using ALT+NUMPAD
combinations as shortcuts for typing in non-English languages, but I
have another use for them. Using ALT+NUMPAD can make for some very ugly
passwords to crack. These odd characters have two major advantages over
normal keystrokes: 1. They are unlikely to be in
someone's dictionary or brute force list. Try brute forcing a password
like "ace of ?s" or "I am the a and the O". 2. Some hardware
key loggers will not log these odd characters. Your mileage may vary on
this as some key loggers can, so don't rely on it to keep you 100% safe.
I'll cover the 2nd point more in an upcoming article. Using
ALT+NUMPAD to type odd characters into your password also has a few
disadvantages. 1. The way they are described in this
article only works in Microsoft Operating Systems (DOS, Windows 9x,
Vista, XP, 2000), and there may be some variation amongst the different
versions. If you know of a good way to do the same thing in Linux please
email me.2. Not all applications will let you use these odd
characters. For testing I tried the password "Oÿ" (ALT+234 and ALT+0255)
on a Windows XP local account,, but not all application will let you
use these sorts of characters in your password. Microsoft
has the following to say on the subject of ALT+NUM key codes:
From:http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/reference/glossary.mspx
Alt+Numpad: A method of entering characters
by typing in the character’s decimal code with the Numeric Pad keys
(Num Lock turned on). In Windows:
• Alt+<xxx>,
where xxx is the decimal value of a code point, generates an OEM-encoded
character.
• Alt+<0xxx>, where xxx is the decimal value of a
code point, generates a Windows-encoded character.
•
Alt+<+>+<xxxx>, where xxxx is the hexadecimal Unicode code
point, generates a Unicode-encoded (UTF-16) character.
Shortly
I'll explain explain the first two methods further. The 3rd is more
problematic to work with. First, you may have to edit your registry and
add a the REG_SZ value "HKEY_Current_User/Control Panel/Input
Method/EnableHexNumpad", then set it to "1". Also, depending on where
you are trying to type the character the application may interpret your
hexadecimal Fs as attempts to bring down the file menu. Since method
three is so problematic I'll focus on the first two methods.First,
make sure you are using the number pad and not the top roll number
keys, only the number pad works for this. Second, make sure NUM LOCK is
on. It does not have to be on in all cases for these key combos to work,
but it helps by keeping the number pad from being misinterpreted.
The chart from the site shows the relevant key codes to get
various symbols. The table on the left shows the OEM Extended ASCII
character set (AKA: IBM PC Extended Character Set; Extended ASCII; High
ASCII; 437 U.S. English). True ASCII is only 7 bit, so the range is 0 to
127. IBM extended it to 8 bits and added more characters. To type these
characters you merely have to hold down an ALT key, type the numeric
value of the character, then release the ALT key. The
table on the right shows the ANSI character set (AKA: Window's ANSI/ISO
Latin-1/ANSI Extended ASCII, though technically they are not exactly the
same thing.). To use the ANSI character set you do the same thing as
the OEM set, but you preface the number with an extra zero. Notice that
the first 127 should be the same in both sets, though values 0-31 may
not be viewable in all cases. I've been in "character encoding hell"
just trying to get this article on my site in a readable format.
For example, ALT+257 gives me a in Wordpad, but in Notepad it
loops back around the character set and gives me?(257-256=1 which is ?
in the OEM set) . If you want to know what key code will bring up a
particular character in a certain Windows font run Windows Character Map
(charmap.exe) and look in the bottom right corner to find out. some
examples : ALT+130 é
ALT+131 â
ALT+132 ä
ALT+133
à
ALT+134 å
ALT+135 ç
ALT+136 ê
ALT+137 ë
ALT+138 è
ALT+139 ï
ALT+140 î
ALT+141 ì
ALT+142 Ä
ALT+143 Å
ALT+144
É
ALT+145 æ
ALT+146 Æ
ALT+147 ô
ALT+148 ö
ALT+149 ò
ALT+150 û
ALT+151 ù
ALT+152 ÿ
ALT+153 Ö
ALT+154 Ü
ALT+155
¢
ALT+156 £
ALT+157 ¥
ALT+158 P
ALT+159 ƒ
ALT+160 á
ALT+161 í
ALT+162 ó
ALT+163 ú
ALT+164 ñ
ALT+165 Ñ
ALT+166
ª
ALT+167 º
ALT+168 ¿
ALT+169 ¬
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