How can I generate a unique, small, random, and user-friendly key?

by

Here’s how I would do it.

I’d obtain a list of common English words with usage frequency and some grammatical information (like is it a noun or a verb?). I think you can look around the intertubes for some copy. Firefox is open-source and it has a spellchecker… so it must be obtainable somehow.

Then I’d run a filter on it so obscure words are removed and that words which are too long are excluded.

Then my generation algorithm would pick 2 words from the list and concatenate them and add a random 3 digits number.

I can also randomize word selection pattern between verb/nouns like

eatCake778
pickBasket524
rideFlyer113
etc..

the case needn’t be camel casing, you can randomize that as well. You can also randomize the placement of the number and the verb/noun.

And since that’s a lot of randomizing, Jeff’s The Danger of Naïveté is a must-read. Also make sure to study dictionary attacks well in advance.

And after I’d implemented it, I’d run a test to make sure that my algorithms should never collide. If the collision rate was high, then I’d play with the parameters (amount of nouns used, amount of verbs used, length of random number, total number of words, different kinds of casings etc.)

More Related Contents:

  1. What is character encoding and why should I bother with it
  2. Using PowerShell to write a file in UTF-8 without the BOM
  3. How can I send and receive WebSocket messages on the server side?
  4. What is base 64 encoding used for?
  5. “’” showing on page instead of ” ‘ “
  6. Why does a base64 encoded string have an = sign at the end
  7. Base64 Encode String in VBScript
  8. Why does base64 encoding require padding if the input length is not divisible by 3?
  9. What is “=C2=A0” in MIME encoded, quoted-printable text?
  10. What’s the difference between encoding and charset?
  11. How do I correct the character encoding of a file?
  12. Difference between double and single quotation marks in fortran?
  13. How to Generate Unique Public and Private Key via RSA
  14. Why is base128 not used? [closed]
  15. Emoji value range
  16. How do I see the current encoding of a file in Sublime Text?
  17. What is the most efficient binary to text encoding?
  18. Should we HTML-encode special characters before storing them in the database?
  19. What is the most common encoding of each language?
  20. Swedish characters and UTF-8
  21. How to configure CharacterEncodingFilter in SpringBoot?
  22. Base64 encode with Stream_StringToBinary inserts a newline, breaking the string?
  23. Convert a Unicode string to an escaped ASCII string
  24. How to read a PEM RSA private key from .NET
  25. Can an array be used as a HashMap key?
  26. Ruby Hash with duplicate keys?
  27. Why does this Python program send empty emails when I encode it with utf-8? [duplicate]
  28. Convert “\x” escaped string into readable string in python
  29. Duplicate entry for key ‘group_key’
  30. UTF8 Filenames in PHP and Different Unicode Encodings

Leave a Comment