Generating Random Passwords

Question

When a user on our site looses his password and heads off to the Lost Password page we need to give him a new temporary password. I don't really mind how random this is, or if it matches all the "needed" strong password rules, all I want to do is give them a password that they can change later.

The application is a Web application written in C#. so I was thinking of being mean and going for the easy route of using part of a Guid. i.e.

Guid.NewGuid().ToString("d").Substring(1,8)

Suggesstions? thoughts?

Answer 1

For this sort of password, I tend to use a system that's likely to generate more easily "used" passwords. Short, often made up of pronouncable fragments and a few numbers, and with no intercharacter ambiguity (is that a 0 or an O? A 1 or an I?). Something like

string[] words = { 'bur', 'ler', 'meh', 'ree' };
string word = "";

Random rnd = new Random();
for (i = 0; i < 3; i++)
   word += words[rnd.Next(words.length)]

int numbCount = rnd.Next(4);
for (i = 0; i < numbCount; i++)
  word += (2 + rnd.Next(7)).ToString();

return word;

(Typed right into the browser, so use only as guidelines. Also, add more words).

Answer 2

This is short and it works great for me.

public static string GenerateRandomCode(int length)
{
    Random rdm = new Random();
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    for(int i = 0; i < length; i++)
        sb.Append(Convert.ToChar(rdm.Next(101,132)));

    return sb.ToString();
}

Answer 3

The main goals of my code are:

1. The distribution of strings is almost uniform (don't care about minor deviations, as long as they're small)
2. It outputs more than a few billion strings for each argument set. Generating an 8 character string (~47 bits of entropy) is meaningless if your PRNG only generates 2 billion (31 bits of entropy) different values.
3. It's secure, since I expect people to use this for passwords or other security tokens.

The first property is achieved by taking a 64 bit value modulo the alphabet size. For small alphabets (such as the 62 characters from the question) this leads to negligible bias. The second and third property are achieved by using RNGCryptoServiceProvider instead of System.Random.

using System;
using System.Security.Cryptography;

public static string GetRandomAlphanumericString(int length)
{
    const string alphanumericCharacters =
        "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ" +
        "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" +
        "0123456789";
    return GetRandomString(length, alphanumericCharacters);
}

public static string GetRandomString(int length, IEnumerable<char> characterSet)
{
    if (length < 0)
        throw new ArgumentException("length must not be negative", "length");
    if (length > int.MaxValue / 8) // 250 million chars ought to be enough for anybody
        throw new ArgumentException("length is too big", "length");
    if (characterSet == null)
        throw new ArgumentNullException("characterSet");
    var characterArray = characterSet.Distinct().ToArray();
    if (characterArray.Length == 0)
        throw new ArgumentException("characterSet must not be empty", "characterSet");

    var bytes = new byte[length * 8];
    new RNGCryptoServiceProvider().GetBytes(bytes);
    var result = new char[length];
    for (int i = 0; i < length; i++)
    {
        ulong value = BitConverter.ToUInt64(bytes, i * 8);
        result[i] = characterArray[value % (uint)characterArray.Length];
    }
    return new string(result);
}

(This is a copy of my answer to How can I generate random 8 character, alphanumeric strings in C#?)

Answer 4

public string Sifre_Uret(int boy, int noalfa)
{

    //  01.03.2016   
    // Genel amaçlı şifre üretme fonksiyonu


    //Fonskiyon 128 den büyük olmasına izin vermiyor.
    if (boy > 128 ) { boy = 128; }
    if (noalfa > 128) { noalfa = 128; }
    if (noalfa > boy) { noalfa = boy; }


    string passch = System.Web.Security.Membership.GeneratePassword(boy, noalfa);

    //URL encoding ve Url Pass + json sorunu yaratabilecekler pass ediliyor.
    //Microsoft Garanti etmiyor. Alfa Sayısallar Olabiliyorimiş . !@#$%^&*()_-+=[{]};:<>|./?.
    //https://msdn.microsoft.com/tr-tr/library/system.web.security.membership.generatepassword(v=vs.110).aspx


    //URL ve Json ajax lar için filtreleme
    passch = passch.Replace(":", "z");
    passch = passch.Replace(";", "W");
    passch = passch.Replace("'", "t");
    passch = passch.Replace("\"", "r");
    passch = passch.Replace("/", "+");
    passch = passch.Replace("\\", "e");

    passch = passch.Replace("?", "9");
    passch = passch.Replace("&", "8");
    passch = passch.Replace("#", "D");
    passch = passch.Replace("%", "u");
    passch = passch.Replace("=", "4");
    passch = passch.Replace("~", "1");

    passch = passch.Replace("[", "2");
    passch = passch.Replace("]", "3");
    passch = passch.Replace("{", "g");
    passch = passch.Replace("}", "J");


    //passch = passch.Replace("(", "6");
    //passch = passch.Replace(")", "0");
    //passch = passch.Replace("|", "p");
    //passch = passch.Replace("@", "4");
    //passch = passch.Replace("!", "u");
    //passch = passch.Replace("$", "Z");
    //passch = passch.Replace("*", "5");
    //passch = passch.Replace("_", "a");

    passch = passch.Replace(",", "V");
    passch = passch.Replace(".", "N");
    passch = passch.Replace("+", "w");
    passch = passch.Replace("-", "7");





    return passch;



}

Answer 5

I created this class that uses RNGCryptoServiceProvider and it is flexible. Example:

var generator = new PasswordGenerator(minimumLengthPassword: 8,
                                      maximumLengthPassword: 15,
                                      minimumUpperCaseChars: 2,
                                      minimumNumericChars: 3,
                                      minimumSpecialChars: 2);
string password = generator.Generate();

Answer 6

public string CreatePassword(int length)
{
        const string valid = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890";
        StringBuilder res = new StringBuilder();
        Random rnd = new Random();
        while (0 < length--)
        {
            res.Append(valid[rnd.Next(valid.Length)]);
        }
        return res.ToString();
}

This has a good benefit of being able to choose from a list of available characters for the generated password (e.g. digits only, only uppercase or only lowercase etc.)