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Passphrases to remember

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diceware

Name: diceware
Brand: diceware
SKU: //ulif/diceware
Rating: 2.35 (240 reviews)

Passphrases to remember...

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diceware

is a passphrase generator following the proposals of Arnold G. Reinhold on http://diceware.com . It generates passphrases by concatenating words randomly picked from wordlists. For instance::

$ diceware MyraPend93rdSixthEagleAid

The passphrase contains by default six words (with first char capitalized) without any separator chars. Optionally you can let

diceware

insert special chars into the passphrase.

diceware

supports several sources of randomness (including real life dice) and different wordlists (including cryptographically signed ones).

.. contents::

Install

This Python package can be installed via pip_::

$ pip install diceware

The exact way depends on your operating system.

Usage

Once installed, use

--help

to list all available options::

$ diceware --help Create a passphrase

positional arguments: INFILE Input wordlist. `-' will read from stdin.

optional arguments: -h, --help show this help message and exit -n NUM, --num NUM number of words to concatenate. Default: 6 -c, --caps Capitalize words. This is the default. --no-caps Turn off capitalization. -s NUM, --specials NUM Insert NUM special chars into generated word. -d DELIMITER, --delimiter DELIMITER Separate words by DELIMITER. Empty string by default. -r SOURCE, --randomsource SOURCE Get randomness from this source. Possible values:

realdice',

system'. Default: system -w NAME, --wordlist NAME Use words from this wordlist. Possible values:

en',

eneff', `enorig', `ensecuredrop'. Wordlists are stored in the folder displayed below. Default: eneff -v, --verbose Be verbose. Use several times for increased verbosity. --version output version information and exit.

Arguments related to `realdice' randomsource: --dice-sides N Number of sides of dice. Default: 6

Wordlists are stored in

With

-n

you can tell how many words are supposed to be picked for your new passphrase::

$ diceware -n 1 Thud

$ diceware -n 2 KnitMargo

You can

diceware

additionally let generate special chars to replace characters in the 'normal' passphrase. The number of special chars generated can be determined with the

-s

option (default is zero)::

$ diceware -s 2 Heroic%unkLon#DmLewJohns

Here

"%"

and

"#"

are the special chars.

Special chars are taken from the following list::

~!#$%^&*()-=+[]{}:;\"'<>?/0123456789

Please note that several special chars might replace the same original char, resulting in a passphrase with less special chars than requested.

With

-d

you can advise

diceware

to put a delimiter string between the words generated::

$ diceware -d "" WavyBaden400WhelpQuestMacon

By default we use the empty string as delimiter, which is good for copying via double click on Linux systems. But other delimiters might make your passphrases more readable (and more secure, see

Security Traps

_ below).

By default the single phrase words are capitalized, i.e. the first char of each word is made uppercase. This does not necessarily give better entropy (but protects against entropy loss due to non

prefix
code

, see
Security Traps
below), and it might improve phrase readability.

You can nevertheless disable caps with the

--no-caps

option::

$ diceware --no-caps oceanblendbaronferrylistenvalet

This will leave the input words untouched (upper-case stays upper-case, lower-case stays lower-case). It does not mean, that all output words will be lower-case (except if all words of your wordlist are lowercase).

As the default lists of

diceware

contain only lower-case terms, here

--no-caps

means in fact lower-case only output, which might be easier to type on smart phones and similar.

diceware

supports also different sources of randomness, which can be chosen with the

-r

--randomsource

option. Use the

--help

option to list all valid values for this option.

By default we use the

random.SystemRandom

_ class of standard Python lib but you can also bring your own dice to create randomness::

$ diceware -r realdice --dice-sides 6 Please roll 5 dice (or a single dice 5 times). Enter your 5 dice results, separated by spaces: 6 4 2 3 1 Please roll 5 dice (or a single dice 5 times). Enter your 5 dice results, separated by spaces: 5 4 3 6 2 ... UnleveledSimilarlyBackboardMurkyOasisReplay

Normally dice have six sides. And this is also the default in

diceware

if you do not use

--dice-sides

. But if you do, you can tell how many sides (all) your dice have. More sides will lead to less rolls required.

We support even sources of randomness from other packages. See the

documentation

_ for more details.

diceware

comes with an English wordlist provided by the EFF, which will be used by default and contains 7776 (=6^5) different words. This list is registered as ``eneff``.

Additionally

diceware

comes with an English wordlist provided by

@heartsucker

_, which contains 8192 different words. This list is based off the original diceware list written by Arnold G. Reinhold.

Both the original and 8k diceware wordlists by Mr. Reinhold are provided. You can enable a certain (installed) wordlist with the

-w

option::

$ diceware --wordlist en_orig YorkNodePrickEchoToriNiobe

See

diceware --help

for a list of all installed wordlists.

If you do not like the wordlists provided, you can use your own one. Any

INFILE

provided will be parsed line by line and each line considered a possible word. For instance::

$ echo -e "hi\nhello\n" > mywordlist.txt $ diceware mywordlist.txt HelloHelloHiHiHiHello

With dash (

) as filename you can pipe in wordlists::

$ echo -e "hi\nhello\n" | diceware - HiHiHelloHiHiHello

In custom wordlists we take each line for a valid word and ignore empty lines (i.e. lines containing whitespace characters only). Oh, and we handle even PGP-signed wordlists.

You can set customized default values in a configuration file

.diceware.ini

(note the leading dot) placed in your home directory. This file could look like this::

[diceware] num = 7 caps = off specials = 2 delimiter = "MYDELIMITER" randomsource = "system" wordlist = "en_securedrop"

The options names have to match long argument names, as output by

--help

. The values set must meet the requirements valid for commandline usage. All options must be set within a section

[diceware]

What is it good for?

Normally,

diceware

passphrases are easier to remember than shorter passwords constructed in more or less bizarre ways. But at the same time

diceware

passphrases provide more entropy as

xkcd

_ can show with the famous '936' proof_:

.. image:: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png :align: center :target: http://xkcd.com/936/

.. _xkcd: http://xkcd.com/ .. _proof: http://xkcd.com/936/

The standard english wordlist of this

diceware

implementation contains 7776 = 6^5 different english words. It is the official EFF_ wordlist. compiled by

Joseph Bonneau

_. Therefore, picking a random word from this list gives an entropy of nearly 12.9 bits. Picking six words means an entropy of 6 x 12.9 = 77.54 bits.

The special chars replacing chars of the originally created passphrase give some more entropy (the more chars you have, the more additional entropy), but not much. For instance, for a sixteen chars phrase you have sixteen possibilities to place one of the 36 special chars. That makes 36 x 16 possibilitities or an entropy of about 9.17 you can add. To get an entropy increase of at least 10 bits, you have to put a special char in a phrase with at least 29 chars (while at the same time an additional word would give you 13 bits of extra entropy). Therefore you might think again about using special chars in your passphrase.

Is it secure?

The security level provided by Diceware_ depends heavily on your source of random. If the delivered randomness is good, then your passphrases will be very strong. If instead someone can foresee the numbers generated by a random number generator, your passphrases will be surprisingly weak.

This Python implementation uses (by default) the

random.SystemRandom

_ source provided by Python. On Un*x systems it accesses

/dev/urandom

. You might want to follow reports about manipulated random number generators in operating systems closely.

The Python API of this package allows usage of other sources of randomness when generating passphrases. This includes real dice. See the

-r

option.

.. _sec-traps:

Security Traps

There are issues that might reduce the entropy of the passphrase generated. One of them is the

prefix code

_ problem:

Prefix Code ...........

If the wordlist contains, for example, the words::

"air", "airport", "portable", "able"

and we switched off caps and delimiter chars, then

diceware

might generate a passphrase containing::

"airportable"

which could come from

air-portable

airport-able

. We cannot tell and an attacker would have less combinations to guess.

To avoid that, you can leave caps enabled (the default), use any word delimiter except the empty string or use the

en_eff

wordlist, which was checked to be a

prefix code

_ (i.e. it does not contain words that start with other words in the list). The

pt-br

is also a secure

prefix code

Each of these measures is sufficient to protect you against the

prefix code

_ problem.

Reduced Entropy ...............

Overall,

diceware

is a kind of mapping input values, dice throws for instance, onto wordlist entries. We normally want each of the words in the wordlist to be picked for passphrases with the same probability.

This, however, is not possible, if the number of wordlist entries is not a power of dice sides. In that case we cut some words of the wordlist and inform the user about the matter. Reducing the number of words this way makes it easier for attackers to guess the phrase picked.

You can fix that problem by using longer wordlists.

Developer Install

Developers want to

fork me on github

_::

$ git clone https://github.com/ulif/diceware.git

We recommend to create and activate a virtualenv_ first::

$ cd diceware/ $ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3.4 py34 $ source py34/bin/activate (py34) $

We support Python versions 2.6, 2.7, 3.3 to 3.7, and pypy.

Now you can create the devel environment::

(py34) $ python setup.py dev

This will fetch test packages (py.test_). You should be able to run tests now::

(py34) $ py.test

If you have also different Python versions installed you can use tox_ for using them all for testing::

(py34) $ pip install tox # only once (py34) $ tox

Should run tests in all supported Python versions.

Documentation Install .....................

The docs can be generated with Sphinx_. The needed packages are installed via::

(py34) $ python setup.py docs

To create HTML you have to go to the

docs/

directory and use the prepared

Makefile

(py34) $ cd docs/ (py34) $ make

This should generate the docs in

docs/_build/html/

Creating the Man Page .....................

We provide a

ReStructuredTexT

_ template to create a man page. When the documentation engine is installed (

Sphinx

_, see above), then you can create a manpage doing::

(py34) $ rst2man.py docs/manpage.rst > diceware.1

The template is mainly provided to ease the job of Debian maintainers. Currently, it is not automatically updated. Dates, authors, synopsis, etc. have to be updated manually. Information in the manpage may therefore be wrong, outdated, or simply misleading.

Credits

Arnold G. Reinhold deserves all merits for the working parts of

Diceware

_. The non-working parts are certainly my fault.

People that helped spotting bugs, providing solutions, etc.:

```
Conor Schaefer (conorsch) 
```
_
Rodolfo Gouveia suggested to activate the
```
--delimiter
```
option.
```
@drebs
```
_ provided patches and discussion for different sources of randomness and the excellent
```
pt-br
```
wordlist.
```
@drebs
```
_ also initiated and performed the packaging of
```
diceware
```
for the
```
Debian
```
_ platform. Many kudos for this work!
```
@drebs
```
_ is also the official Debian maintainer of the
```
diceware
```
package.
```
@heartsucker
```
_ hand-compiled and added a new english wordlist.
```
dwcoder 
```
_ revealed and fixed bugs #19, #21, #23. Also showed sound knowledge of (theoretical) entropy. A pleasure to work with.
```
George V. Reilly 
```
_ pointed to new EFF wordlists.
```
lieryan 
```
_ brought up the
```
prefix
code
```
_ problem.
```
LogosOfJ 
```
_ discovered and fixed serious
```
realdice
```
source of randomness problem.
```
Bhavin Gandhi 
```
_ fixed the confusing error message when an invalid input filename is given.
```
Simon Fondrie-Teitler 
```
_ contributed a machine-readable copyright file, with improvements from
```
@anarcat
```
_
```
Doug Muth 
```
_ fixed formatting in docs.

Many thanks to all of them!

License

"Diceware" is a trademark of Arnold G Reinhold, used with permission.

The copyright for the

Diceware8k list

_ is owned by Arnold G Reinhold. The copyright for the the

Diceware SecureDrop list

_ are owned by

@heartsucker

. Copyright for the
EFF large list
by

Joseph Bonneau

_ and EFF_. See file COPYRIGHT for details.

.. pip: https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/ .. _

@anarcat

: https://github.com/anarcat .. _
Debian
: https://www.debian.org/ .. _
Diceware
: http://diceware.com/ .. _
Diceware standard list
: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.wordlist.asc .. _
Diceware SecureDrop list
: https://github.com/heartsucker/diceware .. _
Diceware8k list
: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware8k.txt .. _
@drebs
: https://github.com/drebs .. _
EFF
: https://eff.org/ .. _
EFF large list
: https://www.eff.org/files/2016/07/18/efflargewordlist.txt .. _
fork me on github
: http://github.com/ulif/diceware/ .. _
@heartsucker
: https://github.com/heartsucker/ .. _
Joseph Bonneau
: https://www.eff.org/about/staff/joseph-bonneau .. _
prefix code
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefixcode .. _

random.SystemRandom

: https://docs.python.org/3.4/library/random.html#random.SystemRandom .. _ReStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html .. _virtualenv: https://virtualenv.pypa.io/ .. _py.test: https://pytest.org/ .. _tox: https://tox.testrun.org/ .. _Sphinx: https://sphinx-doc.org/