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Toddler Password – Get a secure password generated by a toddler

117 points| pain_perdu | 6 years ago |toddlerpassword.com

86 comments

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[+] brianberns|6 years ago|reply
This is cute, but I'm dubious. It generated "y3aEmic8B217" as my password. Kid just happened to hit the shift key while also pressing E and then B? It looks a little too random to me. When I pound on the keyboard, I get results that look more like "fjlsd;lasf".
[+] jefftk|6 years ago|reply
My guess is they're using what the toddler typed to seed an RNG?
[+] firekvz|6 years ago|reply
Yeah I also got a really weird password that needs shift and characters way to distant from the others to believe it's comming from a toddler

Guessing he's using 2 hands most likely you will get characters around the 1st one he pressed, so if you get a 's' character first, you can expect qweadzc near, but going from a 's' to a capital 'P' and then to a ! doesnt look legit to me

[+] mrb|6 years ago|reply
You guys are much too naive :) To me it seems obvious the site is just humorous and not serious. Of course the passwords have not been typed by a toddler but are simply generated randomly.

I guess the author wanted his site to have mild educational value, in that smashing your keyboard generates passwords stronger than the average password picked by people.

[+] Mathnerd314|6 years ago|reply
The site just sends a POST request for a password of the specified length, so there's no easy way to verify the site's claims. He did post his address on the Imprint page, so I guess someone in Germany could drive over there.
[+] okusername|6 years ago|reply
When I let my 5 months old investigate my keyboard, he changed my code, started the compiler and locked the device within 30 seconds. The secret? They use both hands. The give away? They re-press the same keys often, so the result would be a lot more repetitive.
[+] tardo99|6 years ago|reply
I got underscore characters. Seems unlikely.
[+] WilliamEdward|6 years ago|reply
Did you really think this came from an actual toddler? It can generate 50 character length passwords in seconds...
[+] K0SM0S|6 years ago|reply
Just to point out that human "smashing keyboard" is far from random.

Even if it weren't due to the keyboard's fixed layout (between two smashes), it's largely because of our non-random nature — a human being cannot reliably output random objects even in thought / speech. Don't ask me why (I don't think anyone knows or could prove it theoretically) but it's been verified countless times (war secrets help make such research important).

We're at best capable of pseudo-randomness mathematically. Some controversial neuroscience even places us far into the deterministic scope. A child is probably way more determined than an adult for that matter, due to a much simpler schema of reality, with 'weird obsessions' (e.g. it feels nice to smash the same place over and over again, our brain is quick to play games like that, such as walking on specific tiles to avoid the lava in the street).

I wouldn't trust most animals to output randomness. We have crypto packages suited for that purpose. ;-)

[+] hcs|6 years ago|reply
I think what's usually involved in seeding someyhing like this is the noise in timing, not the actual characters entered.
[+] computerex|6 years ago|reply
I am inclined to not trust the story here. Too many shady things going on. The passwords just seem like they are generated algorithmically so the whole underlying premise seems to be bs. The images can be found on a stock image site, they are asking for money and it's all done in a very shady way where the password is being generated serverside making it inherently insecure as a generator.

Seems like someone is using the imagery of a cute child to make a few extra bucks, at best.

[+] blotter_paper|6 years ago|reply
Poor Max -- his dad's a developer, but he still has to work as a typist just to afford clean diapers, food, and toys. Everybody donate to this poor child's cause!

Joking aside, will I break this if I request too many characters? Does it loop after running out of Max's prior input? Is Max really just a script?

[+] WilliamEdward|6 years ago|reply
No i requested a 50 char length password and spammed the button and it kept giving me passwords.

What's likely is the kid's input was used as a seed (string to int?) and then put into a random number generator.

Kind of cute :)

[+] phasetransition|6 years ago|reply
My 2 year old would like to join as technical employee #1, but only if he gets forward vesting.
[+] Istribitel|6 years ago|reply
From experience with my kids when they were toddlers, they would type what they saw. I was kind of freaked out when my son typed "WARNING". They watched VHS tapes or DVDs that began with that message.
[+] Exuma|6 years ago|reply
Why is this upvoted so high, this is purely a scam, and the passwords are not generated in the client.
[+] peteretep|6 years ago|reply
> A toddler acts with good faith

Questionable

[+] NetOpWibby|6 years ago|reply
As a parent of a threenager, In inclined to agree.
[+] SquishyPanda23|6 years ago|reply
A toddler is basically a human that just booted. I'm not sure they have enough entropy to generate a good password. :-P
[+] lostgame|6 years ago|reply
Well, conversely they have very little bias, since they have no previous experience - which could be useful?
[+] em-bee|6 years ago|reply
the entropy contained in a freshly generated human is a few million times more than that of any computer we can build today.

the limitation is the speed at which the human can translate that entropy into machine readable data

[+] topkai22|6 years ago|reply
My toddler provides a whole security suite- she will set your critical files to readonly (by pulling all the keys of your keyboard), airgap your network (by playing with the power strip its connected to), and virus detection (by beginning to emit screams and snot as soon as she catches one) :)
[+] ghostly_s|6 years ago|reply
I don't know what they're doing with the site design but it's completely devoid of text for me even with my adblocker turned off. I thought that was part of the gimmick at first until I realized there is text displayed for a fraction of a second before it finishes loading.
[+] bdcravens|6 years ago|reply
Won't the service have reduced entropy as time goes on?

In 2034, all the passwords will be "lol duh"

[+] ggggtez|6 years ago|reply
This is obviously not real.
[+] pesfandiar|6 years ago|reply
This is cute, but I'd rather use the very secure password generated by experts at https://mostsecure.pw/
[+] Consultant32452|6 years ago|reply
Hilarious, that site gives the same password every time I load the page. Also, that password has never been hacked according to haveibeenpwned.
[+] trpc|6 years ago|reply
After decades of academic research, true randomness finally achieved.
[+] wyldfire|6 years ago|reply
Pretty entertaining. But if you want people to feel any more confident in your generator, you need to have entropy metrics.

I have a feeling toddlers might be worse than other entropy sources.

[+] code-is-code|6 years ago|reply
A human using a keyboard is one of the worst RNAs out there