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

Added some supplemental code to the accepted answer. It improves upon answers just using Random and allows for some password options. I also liked some of the options from the KeePass answer but did not want to include the executable in my solution.

private string RandomPassword(int length, bool includeCharacters, bool includeNumbers, bool includeUppercase, bool includeNonAlphaNumericCharacters, bool includeLookAlikes)
{
    if (length < 8 || length > 128) throw new ArgumentOutOfRangeException("length");
    if (!includeCharacters && !includeNumbers && !includeNonAlphaNumericCharacters) throw new ArgumentException("RandomPassword-Key arguments all false, no values would be returned");

    string pw = "";
    do
    {
        pw += System.Web.Security.Membership.GeneratePassword(128, 25);
        pw = RemoveCharacters(pw, includeCharacters, includeNumbers, includeUppercase, includeNonAlphaNumericCharacters, includeLookAlikes);
    } while (pw.Length < length);

    return pw.Substring(0, length);
}

private string RemoveCharacters(string passwordString, bool includeCharacters, bool includeNumbers, bool includeUppercase, bool includeNonAlphaNumericCharacters, bool includeLookAlikes)
{
    if (!includeCharacters)
    {
        var remove = new string[] { "a", "b", "c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "h", "i", "j", "k", "l", "m", "n", "o", "p", "q", "r", "s", "t", "u", "v", "w", "x", "y", "z" };
        foreach (string r in remove)
        {
            passwordString = passwordString.Replace(r, string.Empty);
            passwordString = passwordString.Replace(r.ToUpper(), string.Empty);
        }
    }

    if (!includeNumbers)
    {
        var remove = new string[] { "0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9" };
        foreach (string r in remove)
            passwordString = passwordString.Replace(r, string.Empty);
    }

    if (!includeUppercase)
        passwordString = passwordString.ToLower();

    if (!includeNonAlphaNumericCharacters)
    {
        var remove = new string[] { "!", "@", "#", "$", "%", "^", "&", "*", "(", ")", "-", "_", "+", "=", "{", "}", "[", "]", "|", "\\", ":", ";", "<", ">", "/", "?", "." };
        foreach (string r in remove)
            passwordString = passwordString.Replace(r, string.Empty);
    }

    if (!includeLookAlikes)
    {
        var remove = new string[] { "(", ")", "0", "O", "o", "1", "i", "I", "l", "|", "!", ":", ";" };
        foreach (string r in remove)
            passwordString = passwordString.Replace(r, string.Empty);
    }

    return passwordString;
}

This was the first link when I searched for generating random passwords and the following is out of scope for the current question but might be important to consider.

• Based upon the assumption that System.Web.Security.Membership.GeneratePassword is cryptographically secure with a minimum of 20% of the characters being Non-Alphanumeric.
• Not sure if removing characters and appending strings is considered good practice in this case and provides enough entropy.
• Might want to consider implementing in some way with SecureString for secure password storage in memory.

Answer 2

validChars can be any construct, but I decided to select based on ascii code ranges removing control chars. In this example, it is a 12 character string.

string validChars = String.Join("", Enumerable.Range(33, (126 - 33)).Where(i => !(new int[] { 34, 38, 39, 44, 60, 62, 96 }).Contains(i)).Select(i => { return (char)i; }));
string.Join("", Enumerable.Range(1, 12).Select(i => { return validChars[(new Random(Guid.NewGuid().GetHashCode())).Next(0, validChars.Length - 1)]; }))

Answer 3

I don't like the passwords that Membership.GeneratePassword() creates, as they're too ugly and have too many special characters.

This code generates a 10 digit not-too-ugly password.

string password = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("N").ToLower()
                      .Replace("1", "").Replace("o", "").Replace("0","")
                      .Substring(0,10);

Sure, I could use a Regex to do all the replaces but this is more readable and maintainable IMO.

Answer 4

 Generate random password of specified length with 
  - Special characters   
  - Number
  - Lowecase
  - Uppercase

  public static string CreatePassword(int length = 12)
    {
        const string lower = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
        const string upper = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
        const string number = "1234567890";
        const string special = "!@#$%^&*";

        var middle = length / 2;
        StringBuilder res = new StringBuilder();
        Random rnd = new Random();
        while (0 < length--)
        {
            if (middle == length)
            {
                res.Append(number[rnd.Next(number.Length)]);
            }
            else if (middle - 1 == length)
            {
                res.Append(special[rnd.Next(special.Length)]);
            }
            else
            {
                if (length % 2 == 0)
                {
                    res.Append(lower[rnd.Next(lower.Length)]);
                }
                else
                {
                    res.Append(upper[rnd.Next(upper.Length)]);
                }
            }
        }
        return res.ToString();
    }

Answer 5

There's always System.Web.Security.Membership.GeneratePassword(int length, int numberOfNonAlphanumericCharacters).

Answer 6

Insert a Timer: timer1, 2 buttons: button1, button2, 1 textBox: textBox1, and a comboBox: comboBox1. Make sure you declare:

int count = 0;

---

Source Code:

 private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // This clears the textBox, resets the count, and starts the timer
        count = 0;
        textBox1.Clear();
        timer1.Start();
    }

    private void timer1_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
    // This generates the password, and types it in the textBox
        count += 1;
            string possible = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890";
            string psw = "";
            Random rnd = new Random { };
            psw += possible[rnd.Next(possible.Length)];
            textBox1.Text += psw;
            if (count == (comboBox1.SelectedIndex + 1))
            {
                timer1.Stop();
            }
    }
    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        // This adds password lengths to the comboBox to choose from.
        comboBox1.Items.Add("1");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("2");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("3");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("4");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("5");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("6");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("7");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("8");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("9");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("10");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("11");
        comboBox1.Items.Add("12");
    }
    private void button2_click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        // This encrypts the password
        tochar = textBox1.Text;
        textBox1.Clear();
        char[] carray = tochar.ToCharArray();
        for (int i = 0; i < carray.Length; i++)
        {
            int num = Convert.ToInt32(carray[i]) + 10;
            string cvrt = Convert.ToChar(num).ToString();
            textBox1.Text += cvrt;
        }
    }