306
You can also just use "random password x" with x being a number. What I use more often is "random uuid" which I hope is self explanatory.
Your password manager does this too!
$ Openssl rand 16 | base64
today I learned. Thanks :)
That's fucked up, they should not do that. Even if they do it in a way that users are actually secure (maybe generating the password in the browser, nothing serverside?), it isn't good to train people to trust a website for this.
hunter2
correct horse battery staple
All I see is *******.
I would definitely use those passwords! /s
Right! How good is the entropy?...
$ pwgen -s -1 32
That isn't great from a security perspective
This seems like one picked up data packet away from being a bad idea. Am I overthinking this?
This is probably ok. First of all, they're probably actually doing it in Javascript in the browser. It probably never travels over the network at all. And, if it did, with HTTPS it would be hard to intercept and decrypt except by a government or something.
But, it still gives me the willies to generate a password on a web page. Fundamentally a web browser is still a tool for sending and receiving data over the Internet, and that's not the kind of tool I'd want to be generating something that I don't want other people to know or see.
What happens if there's a bug? If the password is being generated in an app on my local system a badly designed app with a bug could maybe log my newly generated password in a local log file somewhere. If there's a bug in DuckDuckGo's javascript, who knows where that newly generated password might be logged?
With https as protocol, picked up data packets won't do much harm.
But relying on anything but a local password manager is imho still a bad idea.
Yeah I think I'll just click an icon in my password manager instead.
This is probably fine. The connection to DDG will be over HTTPS, so a captured packet would need to be decoded first. And if someone were to manage to break the encryption, then they would also need to know what service you used the password for.
Ultimately, it's more secure to generate locally, but it would be a huge amount of work to get anything usable out of a packet capture
Are they sending data? I'm pretty sure this will just be generated on the client.
Yeah, I tested it. It's not a client side thing, it is part of the search page output.
oof
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You are not overthinking it. Exploiting this would be a bit more complex than capturing a packet on the wire, but it is possible.
If you intend to use a passphrase for anything important, it's best to generate it locally.
If you have to use this, generate multiple passwords and mix them
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I like the little tools like this that DuckDuckGo has. A couple others:
- "color picker"
- "base64 encode your_text_here" (and "base64 decode encoded_string_here" as well)
- "json formatter"
yeah
now tell me why are people hating it and putting codes on the comments
my favorite is "qr code" best and easiest qr code generator
You can type "qr url" and have it done in one step. However, unlike your two-step process that most likely just fetches results for the common "qr code" query from cache, this loads their servers unnecessarily. The same can be achieved in Firefox by bookmarking "https://qr.15c.me/tiny-qr.html#%s" (or a local copy of tiny-qr.html) and settting its keyword (not to be confused with tags) to "qr".
I like this as most qr generator websites make a link shortener kind of thing and put ads before my content.
Yeah I used it to convert my totp token to qr code. Works great
Whoa, that one is great.
If you're going to auto generate passwords, just use BitWarden.
I use KeePass. It's just a local file (which you can sync/host how you see fit if you need to). I don't understand why people choose to use password managers hosted by other people. You almost certainly don't need that, and it introduces issues and vulnerabilities with little upside.
Or just use a locally hosted password generator for one that isn't handfed to you by a for-profit company...
Ok but you should use passphrases. Better to type and remember in case you need to
There are instances where sites prevent copy-paste, or you are on another machine without your password manager available
typing passwords
If you have a password vault, use the vault first.
For rotating PC login credentials, I use codified passphrases. They typically meet security needs, are unique and nearly unguessable because it could be ANYTHING in your office, and don't contain dictionary words. Example:
Annual evaluations are due before summer. Be sure to mention the Grodsky project! aeadB4S.Bs2mtGp.
Where did Julie's candy go? I ate it! She'll never know >:D
WdJcg?I8i!Snn>:D
Even if I had a perfectly secure connection, I'm still getting a password from a service that could be tracking me.
Adding these symbols adds no security and just makes passwords harder to remember and type. If you dont use very common dictionary words, brute forcing will likely be just letter by letter
I want to be clear that what I'm about to say only refers to compromised systems where the password database has already been exfiltrated and systems that do not lock or otherwise slow down attackers.
A system where the passwords are inaccessible, requires periodic password changes, enforces complexity, and locks out invalid attempts probably is fine, but I'll get there.
A password cracking tool will typically start with lists of known passwords, then it will move on to dictionary words. If the attacker has any personal information, and the means to add it, they will give priority to that information. Phrases with multiple words are more likely, and will be tested next. These dictionary attacks are run first because on a fast enough system they can crack a password in weeks. Munging standard spelling increases the entropy here, increasing the number of attempts to guess a password.
From here, an attacker must start brute force, which tries to decipher your password one character at a time. Adding uppercase characters doubles the number of characters, but that is still super quick to crack. Adding numbers begins to increase the time, but all this is going to be checked within hours or days depending on the length of the password and the resources the attacker is committing.
Adding special characters significantly increases the amount of time because just the standard (33?) characters characters easily accessible on a common US Qwerty keyboard multiples the checks that many times, per each character in the password.
So, uncommonly misspelled words and sprinkled in characters increase the security of your accounts over just dictionary words. This would guard a person's reputation at work if anyone got their company's AD password file out without notice, as well as one's security if their browser's password store is compromised. Also, some people refuse to follow proper security for convenience, and it is sometimes possible to find a service that will allow rapid password attempts.
Ok I think I had a misconception about complexity. In case of brute forcing passwords, of course adding symbols helps.
I generally just use 5-6 passphrase words, which should be very safe as the wordlist is pretty long. But adding spelling errors or dialect is an amazing solution which I should add to all my new passphrase passwords
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That's great if you only have a couple of online accounts, but get past a few dozen and you're toast. I don't know about you, but I sure can't remember 50+ unique pass phrases. However, I can remember the one for my password manager, which has 30+ random character passwords for all my accounts.
You didnt read my comment
Passphrases are easier when you need to enter the password on a system that isn't logged into your vault, even if they are longer. I usually default to 3 word passphrase + random number at the end of a word + random special character in the middle of a word.
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Short password please.
-"Penis"
Long password please
YourPen!sInMyHand
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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