Brew pwgen password#

In the future, the behavior when stdout is a tty may change, so shell scripts using pwgen should explicitly specify the -nc or -0A options.

This can be overriden using the -nc options.

Brew pwgen password#

In addition, for backwards compatibility reasons, when stdout is not a tty and secure password generation mode has not been requested, pwgen will generate less secure passwords, as if the -0A options had been passed to it on the command line. When standard output (stdout) is not a tty, pwgen will only generate one password, as this tends to be much more convenient for shell scripts, and in order to be compatible with previous versions of this program. This prevents someone from being able to “shoulder surf” the user’s chosen password. Used interactively, pwgen will display a screenful of passwords, allowing the user to pick a single password, and then quickly erase the screen. Hence, its default behavior differs depending on whether the standard output is a tty device or a pipe to another program. The pwgen program is designed to be used both interactively, and in shell scripts. On the other hand, completely randomly generated passwords have a tendency to be written down, and are subject to being compromised in that fashion. In particular, passwords generated by pwgen without the -s option should not be used in places where the password could be attacked via an off-line brute-force attack. Human-memorable passwords are never going to be as secure as completely completely random passwords. The pwgen program generates passwords which are designed to be easily memorized by humans, while being as secure as possible.