The password generator is available from the Tools menu. Use the checkboxes to select which characters to include, then the copy button to copy a generated password to the clipboard.
All generated passwords can be saved to a text file by clicking Save.
Sometimes a password policy requires that certain characters be only a certain type of letter. For example, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th digits may have to be numbers. To generate passwords according to a specific format, check the Use a Specific Format option. The help icon provides more help on the format used.
The following symbols are used to specify which characters should appear at which positions.
Symbol | Meaning |
---|---|
* | Any character |
c | Uppercase characters (A-Z) |
C | Lowercase characters (a-z) |
d | Digits (0-9) |
b | Brackets ( {},[],(),<> ) |
e | Extended ASCII characters |
s | Special characters (#,",£,= etc) |
For example: To create a password which starts with any character, has digits at the second and third positions, and an uppercase letter in the fourth position, the format *ddC could be used. If the format entered is shorter than the length specified in the Length field, the remaining characters will be a mixture of all available characters.
Note: Only characters which have been checked from the Possible Characters section will be used, so if the format entered includes 'b', but the brackets checkbox isn't checked, the wildcard (any character) will be used instead.
LockCrypt will estimate the strength of passwords generated to give you an idea of how secure they are.
Estimated generated entropy | An estimated entropy will be calculated by using the number of characters available, which depends on which checkboxes are checked. |
Entropy of selected password | When a password is selected in the list, an algorithm is used to determine the number of characters an attacker would need to use to guess the password. For example: If a password contains only upper and lowercase characters, an attacker would need to try all combinations of the alphabet in both upper and lowercase (52 characters). |
In IT, password entropy refers to the randomness of a characters which make up a password, and is measured in bits. A known password has 0 bits of entropy, whereas a single character selected from the 26 character pool A-Z has 4.7 bits of entropy.
Entropy per character is calculated using log2(nm), where n is the size of the number of possible characters and m is the length of the password.
LockCrypt also provides a percentage rating describing the strength of a password. This is designed as a general guide, however, and the most reliable rating of password security is entropy.