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A Quick and Easy Password Generator

This short tutorial shows you how to quickly generate a list of passwords using /dev/urandom, and uuencode.

Code Listing 1

% dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 2> /dev/null | uuencode -m - | sed -ne 2p | cut -c-8
v1/oVN+S

The options for the cut command indicate the length of the password generated (in this case, 8 characters). This could easily be expanded to generate a whole list of passwords using the for command.

Code Listing 2

% for ((n=0;n<10;n++)); do dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 2> /dev/null | uuencode -m -| sed -ne 2p | cut -c-8; done 
rSQpeNNr 
PesAIgAb 
GUEgoUwT 
U3p+kfqa 
WSgSwgq6 
+9aGihvl 
dYfcaV3b 
guFtI7eZ 
+kzKuW0f 
jJpW/8yO

To create a longer or shorter list, just change the limit in for (in this case 10).

If you want to generate WEP keys for wireless networking, you can use a similar procedure, replacing uuencode with md5sum:

Code Listing 3

% dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 2> /dev/null | md5sum | cut -c-26 aaab69457c239ef1d52617d1fa

Adapted from http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030804-newsletter.xml

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