diceware-list 0.3

Generate diceware wordlists.

diceware-list

sources | issues

Create wordlists for diceware in a reproducible and easy manner:

$ python diceware_list.py -n -l 7776 /usr/share/dict/words
11111 !
11112 !!
...
12353 alan
12354 alana
12355 alar
...
66665 zzz
66666 zzzz

This is not a diceware implementation, but only a helper to create appropriate wordlists.

The main target of diceware-list is to provide “good” wordlists. Wordlists are considered “good” if they

• contain enough terms for use with a certain diceware application (for instance 6^6 = 7776 terms if used with six dice)

• contain terms as short as possible (to reduce typing)

• (optionally) contain no words with non-ASCII chars (to enable use with non-localized keyboards)

• contain no offending terms

The wordlists generated by diceware-list are not meant to be kept secret. You might put them on the internet, publish on facebook or print them in the New York Times. Instead the security of the diceware technique relies on the entropy or (in this case) “randomness” of your dice, computer, etc.

In other words: Your passphrases will not be safe because of hiding your wordlist. They will be safe because there are so many possible combinations of words you can pick from your wordlist. That means: longer lists are more secure than shorter ones (if really used to full extent by your source of randomness with diceware), but hidden lists are not more secure than public ones.

Install

Install latest release from pypi

(venv) $ pip install diceware-list

or clone repository from github:

$ git clone https://github.com/ulif/diceware-list.git

Please consider using virtualenv for deployment.

In an active virtualenv you can install an executable script of diceware-list running:

(venv) $ python setup.py install
(venv) $ diceware-list --help
usage: diceware-list [-h] [-l LENGTH] [-n] [--ascii] [-k] [--use-416] [-v]
                     DICTFILE [DICTFILE ...]

But you can also run the one and only script directly:

$ python diceware_list.py --help
usage: diceware_list.py [-h] [-l LENGTH] [-n] [--ascii] [-k] [--use-416] [-v]
                        DICTFILE [DICTFILE ...]

Usage

First, you need a file with words as “dictionary”. On typical Debian systems such files can be found in /usr/share/dicts/.

This file can then be fed to diceware-list to create a wordlist suitable for use with diceware.:

$ python diceware_list.py /usr/share/dict/words
!
!!
!!!
...
alan
alana
alar
...
zzz
zzzz

By default lists of 8192 (=2**13) words are created. This value can be changed with the -l option.

With -n you can tell diceware-list to put numbers into each line, representing dice throws [1]

$ python diceware_list.py -n -l 7776 /usr/share/dict/words
11111 !
11112 !!
...
12353 alan
12354 alana
12355 alar
...
66665 zzz
66666 zzzz

The –ascii option filters terms out, that contain non-ASCII characters. This can help in generating non-english word lists that are usable with regular english keyboards.

The verbose option –verbose can be given multiple times to increase verbosity.

See –help for other options.

diceware-list follows loosely the recommendations given on http://diceware.com/ by Mr. Reinhold.

Testing

Tests require py.test being installed. In an activated virtualenv it can be installed with pip:

(venv)$ pip install pytest

Afterwards, you can run tests like so:

(venv)$ py.test

If you also install tox:

(venv)$ pip install tox

then you can run all tests for all supported platforms at once:

(venv)$ tox

Coverage

To get a coverage report, you can use the respective py.test plugin:

(venv)$ pip install pytest-cov
(venv)$ py.test --cov=diceware_list.py --cov-report=html

Skip the –cov-report option (or use term or term-missing instead of html) to get a report on commandline.

[1]

The wordlist length in this case should be (number-of-sides-per-dice) powered to (number-of-dicethrows), for instance 6**5 = 7776 for five six-sided dice or a single six-sided dice thrown five times.

Changes

0.3 (2016-07-25)

• Install script as diceware-list instead of diceware_list.

• Allow –sides option to support dice that do not have six sides.

0.2 (2016-03-18)

• Allow -v option multiple times for increased verbosity.

• Pick maximum width terms randomly. Until that change we included all shorter entries and additionally the (alphabetically) first entries of maximum width. Now, we pick a random set of these maximum width entries for the result list.

• Claim support for Python 3.5.

0.1 (2016-02-09)

• Initial release.