What makes passwords harder to crack?

Question

I need a good password..help me!

Answer 1

A good password includes upper and lower case letters, symbols, numbers, and characters. You can read more at

http://www.grc.com

Answer 2

Randomness and complexity is the key........

If an attacker knows that you are a LOTR fan, it's not hard for him to build a dictionary of a few thousand words with all combinations of LOTR character names, place names, etc, with various "appendages" added to these roots. The best way to get randomness is to use a random process when creating your password, for example, rolling dice. Take a look at Diceware Passphrase Hope Page: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

If you use a password generator the attacker can go after it's
algorithm so you want to avoid those.

Answer 3

This site has programs that do the work for you:
http://www.vicman.net/lib/mvpcinfo/crack

Here are a few sites with ideas on creating passwords that are hard to crack: