The Coolest Application You’ve Never Heard Of
I’ve been doing a lot of security work on my web server and email this past week and decided to update all of the passwords on my accounts in the process. I have to admit, that I’m really bad at coming up with good passwords. I guess that’s why password generators were invented. I did a quick search on the internet to find about 11,000,000 matches for the phrase “password generator.” Then I remembered something from a couple of weeks ago. I was adding a new account to my Mac and there was a little application that popped up next to the password field that generated passwords for you. I’ve been using OS X for years, and it’s probably been there all along, but I never paid much attention until now.
The window that pops up calls it the Password Assistant. It allows you to select from different types of passwords such as “Memorable”, “Letters & Numbers”, “Numbers Only”, “Random”, and “FIPS-181 compliant.” This is really cool, because some accounts limit the types of characters that you can use. The Password Assistant also lets you select the length of the password. It does this all while showing you a nice little gauge of how strong the password really is. Ok, maybe I’m getting a little carried away just for a freebie password utility, but I have to say that it has made coming up with new passwords much more enjoyable.
