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.
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 adjacent 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.
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 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.