bashpass

A strong password generator written in Bash. Inspired by OpenWall's pwqgen utility, part of the passwdqc toolkit. It tries to generate easy to remember but hard to crack passwords.

Requirements

GNU sed
GNU grep
GNU coreutils
Bash
A myspell dictionary file (usually installed with the hunspell package of your Linux distribution) or your own word list file (see note below).

Installation

Run make install to install bashpass system-wide. Else it can be run from any path.

Usage

By default bashpass will attempt to use a myspell dictionary file in the locale of the shell it is running under (i.e., whatever the LANG environment variable is set to). You can specify your own word list as well (see options below). The default password length will be three words separated by a random punctuation/number character but this can also be changed.

For example, run without any options, bashpass will generate passwords like behalves9plangent^Buber. See the options below for other variants that bashpass can generate.

Options

-n : number of words to use in the password. Defaults to '3'.
-d : path to a word list file to use to generate the password. Defaults to the myspell dictionary of the running shell's locale (using the LANG environment variable).
-b : bracketize the words in the password (i.e., put a random set of brackets around each of the words). This generates passwords like (Catullus)8{Chomsky}%(Bremen).
-v : replace vowels any vowels in each word are replaced by random punctuation marks.
-s : surround the password with extra symbol characters (i.e., add a symbol on the front and end of the password). This generates passwords like 0budded$snugger+uppity%.

The -b, -v and -s options can be combined.

Using your own word list

The format of the word list file specified y the -d option should be a list of words, one per line. i.e.:

correct
battery
horse
staple
etc.

Note that using your own word list can significantly change the entropy of the passwords generated, potentially resulting in easier to crack passwords...

Limitations

Only tested for the English language using the en_US and en_GB myspell dictionaries.

joshuar/bashpass