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Emojis in passwords would both make passwords more secure and easier to remember for some people. The drawback is that they're very hard to enter in normal, phy

Emojis in passwords would both make passwords more secure and easier to remember for some people. The drawback is that they're very hard to enter in normal, physical keyboards.

grapeshot 10y ago
The other drawback to emojis was that they used to completely crash Chrome's password manager, but I just checked again and it seems it's been fixed.
Swizec 10y ago
Macs come with a built-in emoji keyboard. Cmd+ctrl+space But does it really improve security that much? If password is short, it's still gonna be quick to crack.
- teej 10y ago
  There are ~1800 widely supported emojis. That blows out the search space. There are 10^19 possible passwords for a 6 character alphanum+emoji, the same as a 10 character password using just alphanum + simple keyboard symbols.
  - eslaught 10y ago
    But what's the actual distribution of usage of emoji? I'm guessing there is a small-ish set that people actually use, just like there is a small-ish set of words that people will pick from if you ask them to pick a passphrase containing "random" words. Unless you pick the passphrase for them, you're not really gaining the advantage of the search space size.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    Except people will probably stick to a few common ones and do a pattern. Love eyes x2 heart heart, thumbs up -- just like people don't pick words uniformly.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  Another problem that's easy to overlook until it isn't is entering your password in front of people - if you're selecting stuff on screen then that's a lot more likely to be seen than typing on the keyboard.
- zer0t3ch 10y ago
  > If password is short, it's still gonna be quick to crack Only if the cracker is brute-forcing instead of using common passwords mixed with dictionary words, and if the brute-forcer thought to implement emojis. Given how many emojis there are, it would by psychotic to include them in a brute-force attack unless you already know the person used emojis.
mynewtb 10y ago
And a change in keyboard layout or font could easily render the user lost.
balladeer 10y ago
I have actually used this ":-) buddha sporty donkey ;-)" for "laughing buddha sporty donkey winking" in the past. Not Emojis though. PS. No I don't use it anymore. And yes xkcd 936 was my inspiration.
mistercow 10y ago
If they're randomly generated, are they still going to be easy to remember? User-chosen emoji passwords would probably be even weaker than user-chosen passphrases.

Emojis in passwords would both make passwords more secure and easier to remember for some people. The drawback is that they're very hard to enter in normal, physical keyboards.

grapeshot 10y ago

The other drawback to emojis was that they used to completely crash Chrome's password manager, but I just checked again and it seems it's been fixed.

Swizec 10y ago

Macs come with a built-in emoji keyboard. Cmd+ctrl+space But does it really improve security that much? If password is short, it's still gonna be quick to crack.

teej 10y ago
There are ~1800 widely supported emojis. That blows out the search space. There are 10^19 possible passwords for a 6 character alphanum+emoji, the same as a 10 character password using just alphanum + simple keyboard symbols.
- eslaught 10y ago
  But what's the actual distribution of usage of emoji? I'm guessing there is a small-ish set that people actually use, just like there is a small-ish set of words that people will pick from if you ask them to pick a passphrase containing "random" words. Unless you pick the passphrase for them, you're not really gaining the advantage of the search space size.
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  Except people will probably stick to a few common ones and do a pattern. Love eyes x2 heart heart, thumbs up -- just like people don't pick words uniformly.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mcintyre1994 10y ago
Another problem that's easy to overlook until it isn't is entering your password in front of people - if you're selecting stuff on screen then that's a lot more likely to be seen than typing on the keyboard.
zer0t3ch 10y ago
> If password is short, it's still gonna be quick to crack Only if the cracker is brute-forcing instead of using common passwords mixed with dictionary words, and if the brute-forcer thought to implement emojis. Given how many emojis there are, it would by psychotic to include them in a brute-force attack unless you already know the person used emojis.

mynewtb 10y ago

And a change in keyboard layout or font could easily render the user lost.

balladeer 10y ago

I have actually used this ":-) buddha sporty donkey ;-)" for "laughing buddha sporty donkey winking" in the past. Not Emojis though. PS. No I don't use it anymore. And yes xkcd 936 was my inspiration.

mistercow 10y ago

If they're randomly generated, are they still going to be easy to remember? User-chosen emoji passwords would probably be even weaker than user-chosen passphrases.