11-year-old is running a business of selling passwords for just $2

Yes, you read it right. This 11-year-old girl is selling passwords for just $2 and claims the password to be highly secure and fairly easier to remember than your present ‘secure’ ones.

arstechnica reports that Nira Modi, a 11-year-old sixth grader from New York, is making money by selling strong passwords online. The girl makes ‘Diceware’ strong passwords by simply rolling a dice. The passwords are then written by hand and delivered by regular post to the person who bought it.

Diceware is a website by Nira where you can buy your passwords for $2 each. According to Modi, the Diceware is a well-known decades-old system which is used to make passwords using random generated numbers and words. The numbers are matched to a randomly generated list of English words and these words are then combined into a non-sensical string of passphrases. The trick behind this passphrase is that they are simple words that make no sense and are relatively proven for humans to memorise.

The daughter of Julia Angwin, a veteran privacy-minded journalist at ProPublica who is the author of the book ‘Dragnet Nation’, was on with a research. As part of this research, she had employed her daughter Nira to generate some Diceware passphrases. This requirement struck Nira to start her own business of selling password since many people would require the same. She started accompanying her mom at various book-related events where she would sell passwords by generating random passphrases using nothing but a dice.

"This whole concept of making your own passwords and being super secure and stuff, I don’t think my friends understand that, but I think it’s cool," stated Modi to arstechnica over a short telephonic interview. "I wanted to make it a public thing because I wasn’t getting very much money," she said. "I thought it would be fun to have my own website," she added.

Now that the business is online, she is able to reach out to the world and also generate some income. Each time an order was placed, she would roll the dice and note down the numbers and later write them down by hand and send them over to the customer by regular post.

arstechnica mentions that, ‘If she kept busy at it full-time, Modi would be raking in about $12 per hour—fully one-third more than New York state’s $8.75 minimum wage, which is set to go up to $9.00 on December 31, 2015. As of now, she said she’s sold "around 30" in total, including in-person sales.’

Modi spends her time doing gymnastics and dancing when she is not busy with Diceware.

The following is from Nira’s website:

What is Diceware?

Diceware is a system for building strong passwords that was developed by Arnold G. Reinhold. The Diceware method create strong passwords that are easy to remember but extremely difficult for hackers to crack. Passwords contain random words from the dictionary, such as: alger klm curry blond puck horse.

Why use Diceware?

Passwords need two characteristics to thwart hackers. First, they must be unique - meaning not available in any of the publicly available lists of previously hacked passwords. Second, they must contain a lot of "entropy" - which roughly means that it would take a powerful computer a very long time to guess the password. Basically, a high entropy password is a long password.

Studies have shown that most people are not very good at thinking up unique, long passwords on their own. So that is why Diceware is a good method for passwords that you really want to be secure - such as the passwords for e-mail and financial accounts.

How does Diceware work?

You roll a die 5 times and write down each number. Then you look up the resulting five-digit number in the Diceware dictionary, which contains a numbered list of short words.

The Diceware creator recommends that people should use six words for their passwords (or five words, plus a character). He says:

Five words are breakable with a thousand or so PCs equipped with high-end graphics processors. (Criminal gangs with botnets of infected PCs can marshal such resources.)

Six words may be breakable by an organization with a very large budget, such as a large country's security agency.

Seven words and longer are unbreakable with any known technology, but may be within the range of large organizations by around 2030.

Eight words should be completely secure through 2050.

Why should I buy a Diceware password instead of making one myself?

You can definitely make one yourself. I started this business because my mom was too lazy to roll dice so many times, so she paid me to make roll dice and make passwords for her. Then I realized that other people wanted them, too.

How much do passwords cost?

I make passwords containing six words. Each password costs $2.

How do you know I'm not stealing your passwords?

Once you get your passwords you need to make some changes such as capitalizing some letters and/or adding symbols such as exclamations. This way it's not the exact same one that I gave you.

How do you remember the passwords?

I personally find that my Diceware passwords are surprisingly easy to remember. However, I only use a few Diceware passwords for important accounts. I use a password manager, 1Password, to create and store passwords for my less-important accounts.

For more info on Diceware, click here.