password restriction question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jon
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J

Jon

I have a requirement for a new product that the user's passwords cannot
contain a word found in the dictionary.

I don't really have any practical ideas on how to do this. What's the best
way to do it?

Thanks
 
I have a requirement for a new product that the user's passwords cannot
contain a word found in the dictionary.
Click to expand...

The dictionary...? What dictionary?

If you mean something like the Oxford English Dictionary or Websters, you
could have quite a task on your hands!

If that is indeed what you mean, where do you draw the line...?

Does that mean that no password can contain the letter 'a'? That's *a*
perfectly good word which will be found in any English dictionary...
 
Exactly, the user's scope document says "passwords cannot contain words
found in the dictionary". I will clarify with them, but I assume they mean a
standard US dictionary, like oxford or websters.
 
Makes me proud to be Welsh.

Triwch chi ffeindio'r geiriau hyn mewn geiriadur Saesneg!


Peter
 
Exactly, the user's scope document says "passwords cannot contain words
found in the dictionary". I will clarify with them, but I assume they mean
a standard US dictionary, like oxford or websters.
Click to expand...

Wow! I think you might need to "manage expectations" a bit on that one...
:-)

Clearly, you're not going to purchase an electronic copy of Websters and
extract every word into a database or something - that would be ridiculous!

You could, I suppose, insist that every other character is non alphabetic
e.g.

1m2a3r4k5r6a7e8

If you do that, though, you might find that your users have a bit of hard
time remembering their password - when that happens, users have a tendency
of actually writing the password down somewhere...
 
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