Pwgen redux

[Brandon S. Allbery]

Well, there has by now been quite a bit of comment about my password
generator.  I've been combining ideas and adding a few of my own, and am now
working on v1.1 of pwgen.

The new features are:

* I've taken the tables out of the pwgen.c file and put them into a
  "compiled" binary file.  This let me add a few more features easily.

* Frequencies of phonemes and spellings have been added.

* Phoneme "types" can now be defined in the control file.  This allows
  pwgen to support more complex phoneme combinations, and simplifies
  adaptation for languages other than English.  (After all, I don't
  claim that all languages are pronounced alike.  Heck, not everyone
  pronounces English the same way; ask a few randomly-chosen people to
  pronounce "creek", for example.)

* "Warp" tables have been added.  This is a feature where the control
  file has lists of alternatives for letters; after a password is built
  from phonemes, randomly chosen letters are changed to randomly chosen
  alternate letters from a warp table.  One or more tables can be selected
  on the command line, or pwgen can be told to choose one or more for itself.

* Since the frequency-corrected tables are generated when the control file
  is read, it is possible to tell pwgen to randomly mutate the frequencies.

* The RNG is seeded from as many places as possible, which helps to make it
  even more random (at best, one may have to know the entire state of the
  system in order to deduce the RNG seed!).

* An alternative RNG (the one posted to comp.sources.misc a few weeks ago)
  is provided in the code; it is used if the program is compiled with NGRAND
  defined.

Again, let me stress that it isn't intended to be *the* answer to the
problem of getting people to choose good passwords; it's mainly an example
of something that *could* be done to improve the situation.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, comp.sources.misc moderator and one admin of ncoast PA UN*X
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