Password generator bookmarklet

angel.net has this absolutely splendid bookmarlet for securing good passwords - it's different for every site .. yet can get it with a simple master password.

I mean, I don't mind making up and memorizing the really important ones but what about all those e-commerce and community sites that want me to create accounts? I used to end up using the same password at all of them and then I felt stupid knowing that one SQL Server exploit or disgruntled admin could cost me my whole identity.

So, I wrote a bookmarklet to make up passwords for me. It asks for my master password, which is all I have to remember, and uses it to make a unique password for each site. It even types the password into any password fields on the current page for me, whether I'm registering for a new account or logging in on a subsequent visit.

Here's the bookmarklet: Generate password. You can drag it to your browser's bookmark list or button bar to keep it handy. Or just click it right now to test it on the form below.

How does it work? It gets the hostname from the page's URL and mixes it together with your personal master password using a little cryptographic magic we call MD5. It will always get the same result if given that hostname and master password, but will never get that result if either changes. (Well, once in a few billion times it might.)

Note that this bookmarklet works on Safari and Mozilla but is too long for Internet Explorer which I believe to have been written by trained otters.