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Passcode
Modern field guide to security and privacy
Ann Hermes
Mira Modi owns a secure password business where she generates and sells cryptographically strong passphrases.

Video: How to create a secure password, as told by a 12-year-old

A young New Yorker started her own business to sell secure passwords. 

Mira Modi is a 12-year-old entrepreneur who wants to make the world safer one secure password at a time. 

While the average person has 19 to 25 passwords, easy-to-remember passwords are also really easy to guess – or crack. “If you were choosing your own password you’d probably associate it with something easy to remember, like, maybe your pet’s name,” Mira says, “and that’s easier to guess than just random words.” 

So the young New Yorker started her own business to sell people more secure passwords to better protect them from hackers and other surveillance, using a technique called Diceware. She rolls dice to generate a random, six-word phrase, which she mails to each customer. Watch our video to learn more about how to create a secure password using Diceware: 

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Mira is one of Passcode's 15 under 15 kid hackers. For the full series, see: passcode.csmonitor.com/hackerkids

Security Culture

This journalism empowers people to understand the bigger picture of cybersecurity as it connects to some of the most personal parts of their lives: their job, their education, the evolving digital culture around them, and the technology they use on a day-to-day basis. As part of the Monitor’s overarching commitment to chronicling human progress, we see these very human issues within cybersecurity to be critical and overlooked parts of the conversation.

This initiative is generously supported by

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