A random password generator is a software program or hardware device that takes input from a random or pseudo-random number generator and automatically generates a password.
Mnemonic hashes, which reversibly convert random strings into more memorable passwords, can substantially improve the ease of memorization. As the hash can be processed by a computer to recover the original 60-bit string, it has at least as much information content as the original string.[1]
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Websites
Web Cryptography API
The Web Cryptography API is the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) recommendation for a low-level interface that would increase the security of web applications by allowing them to perform cryptographic functions without having to access raw keying material. The Web Crypto API provides a reliable way to generate passwords using the crypto.getRandomValues() method. Here is the simple Javascript code that generate the strong password using web crypto API.[2][3]
FIPS 181 standard
Many computer systems already have an application (typically named "apg") to implement the password generator standard FIPS 181.[4]FIPS 181—Automated Password Generator—describes a standard process for converting random bits (from a hardware random number generator) into somewhat pronounceable "words" suitable for a passphrase.[5] However, in 1994 an attack on the FIPS 181 algorithm was discovered, such that an attacker can expect, on average, to break into 1% of accounts that have passwords based on the algorithm, after searching just 1.6 million passwords. This is due to the non-uniformity in the distribution of passwords generated, which can be addressed by using longer passwords or by modifying the algorithm.[6][7]
Mechanical methods
Yet another method is to use physical devices such as dice to generate the randomness. One simple way to do this uses a 6 by 6 table of characters. The first die roll selects a row in the table and the second a column. So, for example, a roll of 2 followed by a roll of 4 would select the letter "j" from the fractionation table below.[8]
↑ Ghazvininejad, Marjan; Knight, Kevin (May–June 2015). "How to Memorize a Random 60-Bit String"(PDF). Proceedings of the 2015 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies. Vol.Proceedings of the 2015 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies. Denver, Colorado: Association for Computational Linguistics. pp.1569–1575. doi:10.3115/v1/N15-1180. S2CID8028691.
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