Relaxing password policy

[Björn Persson]

Ian Pilcher wrote:

> I am trying to set up an account for my girlfriend on my FC1 box, and I
> can already tell that the default password policy is going to drive her
> insane.  (I've previously just gotten around it by su'ing to root and
> setting my passwords manually, but this won't work for her.)
> 
> How can I configure the password checking policy to be a little less
> stringent?

These days everyone needs to know how to make passwords. It might not be 
so important on your home computer, but if your girlfriend can't choose 
a good password there, then she'll choose bad passwords at work and 
other places too, which will make her a security risk. I bet she 
wouldn't want to be a security risk.

A method I like is to make up a grammatically correct but totally absurd 
sentence. The absurdity makes it both easy to remember and very 
difficult to guess. For example take a historical person, like Napoleon, 
give him a modern gadget, say a DVD burner, and let the gadget do or be 
something that only humans can, like cartooning. Take the first letter 
in each word or turn them into digits where possible, and keep any 
special characters. The sentence "Napoleon Bonaparte's DVD burner is a 
cartoonist." might become the password "NB'sDbi1c." When I get to choose 
my passwords myself and use this method I find it nearly impossible to 
forget them.

Björn Persson