Complying With Complexity Rules (Mutators)

Many websites have complexity rules (passwords must be a certain length, contain certain characters such as upper case, lower case, numbers or punctuation symbols) which you need to meet.

Starting with version 0.13 of the Readable Passphrase Generator, there are "mutators" which will convert some letters to upper case and add numbers to the passphrase. This allows you to generate passphrases which meet most complexity requirements without further modifications. The phrases generated are slightly more difficult to remember, but it's still much easier than total randomness!

To enable this, pop into the configuration and select the "Standard" mutator. This will add 2 numbers and capitalise a whole word in the passphrase. The numbers will always be at the end of a word, and the capitalised word will be at least 3 letters long. This should meet most complexity requirements (spaces usually count as a 'special' character), while being pretty easy to remember.

If you'd like more control over when, where and how many numbers and uppers you add, select the "Custom" mutator and tweak the settings to your heart's content. Remember, you can look at KeePass's "Preview" tab to see the sorts of phrases you'll generate.

Standard Example

Here's an example of the "standard" mutator.

the byte appended the borough or the knuckle

Becomes

the2 byte appended the BOROUGH or the5 knuckle

Custom Example

And a "custom" mutator with 3 numbers anywhere and 999 upper case anywhere.

the miler reduced the vacation

Becomes

THE MILER RE3DUCED 6THE VAC2ATION

The Old Standard Way

In version 0.13, the standard mutators option capitalised the first letter of two words and added two numbers. That was changed in 0.14 to capitalise a whole word (because it's easier to remember one word to capitalise than two letters). But if you'd prefer the old behaviour, you can use a custom mutator like so:

• Upper case style: StartOfWord - count 2
• Numeric style: EndOfWord - count 2

A Note about Combinations

Mutators do not impact the number of combinations reported.

Although mutators do (very slightly) increase the actual number of combinations / entropy of your passphrase, their intent is to comply with complexity rules.