PWGen - A Professional Password Generator for Windows
PWGen is a professional password generator that allows you to create large amounts of cryptographically-secure passwords -"classical" passwords, pronounceable passwords, pattern-based passwords, and passphrases consisting of words from word lists.
It uses a "random pool" technique based on strong cryptography to generate random data from indeterministic user inputs (keystrokes, mouse handling) and volatile system parameters.
PWGen provides lots of options to customize passwords to the users' various needs. Additionally, it offers strong text encryption and the creation of random data files (which can be used as key files for encryption utilities, for example).
Features:
- Password generation based on a cryptographically secure pseudo-random number generator (combination of SHA-256 and AES)
- Entropy gathering by measuring time intervals between keystrokes, mouse movements and mouse clicks; additionally, entropy from volatile system-specific parameters are collected in regular time intervals
- Generation of passphrases composed of words from a word list Pattern-based password generation (formatted passwords) provides nearly endless possibilities to customize passwords to the user's needs
- Generation of phonetic (pronounceable) passwords based on language-specific trigram (3-letter sequences) frequencies
- Numerous password options for various purposes
- Generation of large amounts of passwords at once
- "Password hasher" functionality
- Secure text encryption (AES with 256-bit key)
- Multilingual support
- Full Unicode Support
- Runs on all 32-bit & 64-bit Windows versions (i.e., Windows 95 [OEM SR2], NT 4.0, 98, 2000, Me, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10; Windows Server 2003, 2008, 2012)
PWGen is capable of generating the following types of passwords:
- "Classical" passwords such as VLyw68JsSq0m, i.e., random sequences of characters from a specific character set (upper-case/lower-case letters and numbers in the example).
- Phonetic (pronounceable) passwords such as terweeptoton, which are generated by evaluating the frequencies of all possible trigrams (1 trigram = 3-letter sequence; for 1 trigram, there are 263 = 17,576 possible letter combinations) of a certain language (English in the example).
- Passphrases such as khaki cello waxy mecca verdi, composed of randomly chosen words from a word list. Words may be easily combined with random characters to give passphrases such as lends-ah susie-Tx chats-Hz joins-TE.
- Formatted passwords or passwords based on patterns: This is the most versatile password generation feature, for it provides a variety of format specifiers to insert characters from pre-defined character sets and words from a specific word list into the resulting password. Moreover, it allows for repeating and randomly permuting sequences in the password. Example: The format string {%4u%4l%2d%s%} means "insert 4 upper-case letters, 4 lower-case letters, 2 digits, and 1 special symbol; permute the character sequence afterwards", and yields passwords such as fP4eM#mAiV2.
- "Hashed" passwords, passwords based on a master password and a parameter, this feature enables you to reproducibly generate unique passwords using a (secret) master password and a (not necessarily secret) parameter, such as the name of a website. For example, the master password qwerty (hint: don’t use that one, ever!) together with the parameter yahoo yields the password W4hfOL21K3FYb8Qx. PWGen's password hasher offers several pre-defined character sets for the user to choose from. Being independent of any encrypted databases of stored parameter–password combinations, it may thus function as a fully portable "password safe". In case you want to be independent of Windows-based applications, PWGen can also provide full compatibility with the Hashapass generator, which is accessible via the Internet and should work with any browser. To give the user an estimation of the quality of the generated passwords, PWGen displays a "password quality bar" featuring a color range from red-orange (less secure) to dark green (more secure).
Source: www.effecthacking.com
PWGen - A Professional Password Generator for Windows
Reviewed by Anonymous
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Reviewed by Anonymous
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9:15 PM
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