Random words will form best passwords

It is far better to concoct passwords made up of three random words than use more complex variations involving streams of letters, numbers and symbols, government experts have said.

The National Cyber Security Centre, part of Government Communications Headquarters, highlighted its “three random words” recommendation in a new blog post.

It said a key reason for using the system is it creates passwords that are easy to remember yet strong enough to keep online accounts secure from cyber criminals, owing to their unusual combination of letters.

By contrast, more complex passwords can be ineffective because they can be more easily guessed by criminals and the software they build to detect them, the advice says.

The agency says cyber criminals target predictable means supposed to make passwords more complex – like substituting the letter o with a zero, or the number one with an exclamation mark. Criminals allow for such password patterns in their hacking software.

“Counter-intuitively, the enforcement of these complexity requirements results in more predictable passwords,” the agency said in its post.