Another question from a newbie trying to learn!

I'd like to learn how to make my own, and other passwords more secure (so they can't be so easily cracked by things like rainbow tables!). I always thought I'd used secure passwords, but have been shocked how easliy I've been able to crack my own password hashes!

I've read about using salted hashes , I think I'm supposed by holding down the ctrl key, but haven't been able to figure out how to do it. I'd also like to know how to turn new passwords I set up for Windows XP, & Windows Vista computers into hashes so I can submit them here to see if they can be cracked.

Any advice posted in very simple layman's terms so I can understand it, or referral to a place on this forum or other websites, would be greatly appreciated!

you cant use salted hashes yourself, just like that (not even pressing ctrl xDDD)
It depends on the software you use, if it uses a salt.
eg vBulletin (forum software=) alsways salts the hashes.

Passwords are safe, if they are long and have many different types of letters (mixalpha) and best a symbol or two.

passwords are not crackable with Rainbowtables, if you use a character that isn't in the rainbowtable like °, something like that.
so any password with lets say 9 characters and mre, that has mixlpha, numeric and symbls in it is quite safe.

Nothing is uncrackable, but the longer and more complicated your password is, the more time the ataacke will need, and then mostly it just isnt worth ist.

well all pws containing äöüß and the danish chars are nearly non crackable (well you can bf them but if they are longer then 9keys ... no chance ^^)

It's a best practice to use a very long sentence (at least 40 chars) that only make sense to yourself as password. This sentence however should contain as much as different characters (upper- and lowercase, numerics, special characters like, @#$%, etc.).

And don't use words that can be found in a dictionary (not even permutations of the word)
So a word like "Århus06" can easily be cracked by using a danish dictionary while permutating the words