Wow, thanks guys for all your recommendations, including the Bushmaster... but personally, I like the Street Sweeper for CQ work.
On the subject of creating a strong password, wouldn't a mnemonic phrase with special character substitution be stronger than any pattern? Something like...
Mary had a little lamb, it's fleece was white as snow... would end up being...
MHALLIFWWAS and when you substitute some special characters, you end up with...
MH@77IFWW@$
Wouldn't this be considered a strong password?
Of course the strongest passwords would be the dynamic ones....
Don't use a common phrase, or a phrase from a book, movie, nursery rhyme, etc.
There is a program called "crack" that does a "dictionary attack" on passwords. It tries various common password creation schemes, such as combining a couple of smaller words, possible birthdays, character substitutions, adding a number in the middle, wife or dog names, months, etc. "Crack" and similar programs will break an amazingly high percentage of the passwords used by people.
There has been a LOT of work and tricks added to "crack" programs, such as precompliled lists of passwords and "hash" values, etc. Crack programs have lists of common phrases, lists of words, names, etc.
Make up a phrase of your own that you can remember. For instance, "Jodie Foster told Hannibal Lector she remembered lambs being slaughtered on the farm she lived on as a small child in Olathe Kansas." "JFTHLSRLBSOTFSLOAASCIOK"
The more "unrelated randomness" in the string the better.
"Jodie Foster told Hannibal Lector about lambs. Chocolate covered grasshoppers taste funny. Those geese honked as they flew over at night."
"JFTHLALCCGTFTGHATFOAN"
Throwing in the @ and similar stuff helps a little, but the password guessing programs know how to try those tricks. Personally, I prefer to simply throw in a few more characters than to go to the effort to remember which characters shift and substitute.
The more characters the better.
There's an entire science on the "randomness" of passwords. Google password entropy. In simplified terms, it estimates how many tries an enemy who knows everything about you except the actual password has to make before he guesses the password correctly.
Every additional "random" thing you throw in, the more entropy (or bit strength) you have.
In theory, randomly chosen letters have about 4.5 bits per letter. Letters from a phrase probably have less entropy, so assume 3 bits per letter for a MADE UP phrase. Use a lot of letters. 20 letters get you something like 60 bits of entropy, which is reasonable.
Be sure that the encryption algorithm you're using really uses longer passwords. Some of them will let you enter 20 letters, but ignore anything after a certain length. Check out the specs for the algorithm, and then try typing in the last character wrong and see that it doesn't encrypt.
You won't get a good short answer on encryption in a short discussion. The "professional" cryptography and security groups spend thousands and thousands of pages of discussion and don't come up with clear answers.
