XKCD Roll

Simple terminal diceware to generate high-entropy passwords. The application was inspired by xkcd 936.

How it Works?

Simple! You choose the number of words you want in the final genrated phrase, and the application will roll a die 5 times for each word. This will produce a sequence of 5 numbers from 1-6 (ex. 12345). Then the app will parse through a large list of words (7775 words), and match the number to a word in the dictionary.

...
12344	around
12345	arousal <-
12346	arrange
...

Commandline Arguments

-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-s STRATEGY, --strategy STRATEGY
                      capitalize strategy for generated words ('lower', 'upper', 'alternating_words', 'alternating_chars') (default 'lower')
-d DELIMITER, --delimiter DELIMITER
                      delimiter symbol to be used between words (default ' ')
-i, --interactive     interactive mode
-n NUM_WORDS, --number NUM_WORDS
                      number of words to be generated (default 3)

EFF Word List

The application uses the Electronic Frontier Foundation's long list of words. It can be found here.

How Entropy is Calculated?

Shannon's entropy is a common mathematical notation in Information Theory which describes a measure of disorder or randomness. The highest the score is in bits the more disordered or random a thing is, and the harder it is to be recreated or reassembled.

$\log_2(P^L)$

Where P is the pool of possible symbols/words, and L is the number of words in the phrase.

What is the Recommended Entropy Score?

As computers get faster and faster, passwords can also get cracked faster. The recommended entropy score for a password as of this writing should be above 70bits.

How to Run the Code

1. Make sure you have python3 and pip
2. Install dependencies by running the following

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

3. Either run the program directly as a python script

$ python3 xkcdroll

4. Or copy the executable xkcdroll command somewhere in your $PATH

$ cp ./xkcdroll /usr/bin
$ xkcdroll -h