Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL!WANCHO From: WANCHO@WSMR-SIMTEL20.ARMY.MIL ("Frank J. Wancho") Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: passwords Message-ID: Date: 10 Nov 88 04:53:00 GMT Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 19 Concerning pseudo-random, semi-pronounceable password generation, please see RFC 972. The original algorithm was written in BASIC by Paul D. Merillar and Arthur A. Key. The implementation in our PWDGEN server, a variation of our local CHGPWD program, came from Sandia Labs, written in FORTRAN, and uses a system-wide 36-bit seed rather than a clock-based seed. Marshall Rose converted that program to C... From your message, it seems that the algorithm has found its way around, and that's good to see. From the source code: Basically "random pronounceable words" are built by alternating Vowels and Consonants. However, there are "Digraphs", and these are presorted according to END, MIDDLE, and START positions. Not going into combinatorial analysis, with seven characters the "possible" combinations exceed 20 Million. (I haven't computed how many are possible with eight characters...) --Frank