Security is a roll of the dice.

Are you tired of forgetting your passwords? Do you want to create strong passwords that are easy to remember and hard to crack? If so, you might want to try Diceware!

Diceware is a simple and clever way to generate passwords based on random words. For example, alger klm curry blond puck horse is a great password that you can memorize, but it would take a hacker billions of years to guess.

How does it work? All you need is a list of words and some dice (or a random number generator). You roll the dice five times and use the number to look up a word from the list. You repeat this process until you have enough words for your password. The more words you use, the stronger your password becomes.

But why use words instead of symbols or numbers? Because words are easier for our brains to remember than random strings of characters. And because length matters more than complexity when it comes to password security.

We used to hand out colorful dice to our users and guide them through the process, but then COVID happened and we had to find another way. So we created a single page applet that does the same thing as physical dice, but online. We used HTML 5, CSS and jQuery to make it look nice and work smoothly.

Screenshot of the Dice-ware application.

The only downside is that we couldn’t import the word list as an array, so we had to loop through each box and ask the user to look up the word manually. That was a bit annoying, but still better than using weak passwords.

We used the applet ourselves and securely shared the new Diceware passwords with our users. Then we applied a domain password policy that prevents them from changing it to something insecure.

But then we discovered that someone else had already done it better. Doug from dmuth.org has created the best Diceware password generator we have ever seen. It has everything: a custom word list, an option to add numbers or symbols, a copy button, and even a QR code! You should definitely check it out at https://diceware.dmuth.org/.